Palestinian Youth Are Ready to Tell their Stories

Available in: العربي

The Start of the Program Empowering Palestinian Youth Through Digital Media   Videos Story telling     Hassaneen from Al Ammari Refugee Camp Haya from Umalshrayet

"We identified the film shooting locations, we agreed on the story characters and we are ready now to start doing the real work of converting the story into a short-film…We are looking forward to being introduced to video editing software as well”, an excited Alaa explains, when asked about her work in the Youth Empowerment Through Digital Media Training Project. 

Allaa is from the Al Faraa Refugee Camp near Nablus, she is an English Literature student at Al-Quds Open University in Jerusalem and one of the twenty young Palestinians who are taking part in the “Youth Empowerment Through Digital Media Training Project” financed by the World Bank’s Youth innovation Fund (YIF). 

They are learning video story telling techniques as a means to constructively express themselves, while gaining employable skills in the media – a growing sector in West Bank and Gaza - as well as important leadership skills as the youth will then be in charge of training Palestinian children during similar summer workshops.

Eleven training sessions have taken place since the start of the program in February 2008 at the Computer Clubhouse in Ramallah. Each Saturday afternoon, youth from Ramallah City and its neighborhoods, in addition to youth from refugee camps of Qalandia, Al Amari, and Jalazone (near Ramallah), and from Shufat (near Jerusalem) and Al Faraa (near Nablus) all come together for a four hour training session on video and photography storytelling.

The twenty youth were assigned to four different groups (five per group). Each group is expected to produce a short-film (5-10 min each) based on a story discussed and agreed upon by all group members. “Youth are being introduced to digital storytelling conceptual and technical techniques that will enable them to brainstorm stories and convert them into short-films”

Raed Yacoub, one of the Computer Clubhouse youth trainer, explains. For example, Alaa is working with other youth from Jalazone and Al Faraa refugee camps and from the Umalsharayet neighborhood near Ramallah: “We learned how to make storyboarding and divide our story into scenes before thinking about the production plan of each of scene”. Her story and the one of her group is about the suffering of Palestinian youth under the occupation, she explains.

Hassaneen is 22 years old from Al Ammari Refugee Camp near Ramallah and he is working in a group
with youth from Qalandia and Alamari refugee camps and Umalsharayet neighborhood near Ramallah. In describing the training received, he said:  “We learned professional filming and photography technique in terms of lighting and sound quality and other things….we started practicing on film shooting, we learned how all film scenes and production plans should be planned and ready before starting to shoot… we expect to have an 8 min film consisting of 5 or 6 scenes”.

Hassaneen’s group decided to tell the experience of a child whose father was arrested by the Israeli military. The story highlights the social and economic consequences and responsibilities that the child is expected to take on once the father is imprisoned. Hassaneen explained “Our story is about a 13 year old child suffering after his father gets arrested… it is based on a real story that shows how the kid was forced to drop out of school to help his family in making their living”. Reflecting his impressions about the project, he said “when I first heard about it, I was skeptical…but when I first experienced the training, I liked it, and I got increasingly involved into participating in this training program. It was different than my initial expectations”.

In the remaining training sessions, and as they started shooting, each group also learned video editing and post production techniques. Upon completion, they showcased their movies in various exhibition spaces during the month of June. Meanwhile, the project trainers and youth trainees will also work together on planning during the summer video storytelling workshops to be given by the youth themselves to Palestinian children during special summer workshops.