Paint murals with 300 Syrian Refugee children

Location: Azraq Refugee Camp, Za’atari Refugee Camp and host communities.

Overview:

As the Syrian War continues to rage as it enters its eighth year, refugees continue to leave everything they know to escape with their lives. While some reach Europe and other Western countries, the overwhelming majority have flooded into neighboring countries. In Jordan and Lebanon, two small and poor Arab nations that are ill-equipped to handle the massive influx, many Syrians live in desperate conditions in towns and cities (known as host communities) and refugee camps. As they struggle with basic necessities, they also face mental health issues relating to conflict and displacement. People have witnessed unimaginable horrors, lost loved ones and often feel that their lives have lost meaning.

Stories from the field: 

Our favorite artist was Mohammed, a thirty-year-old in a rough life situation, who has experience creating murals around the camp and is exceptional with the kids. He gets them excited with rousing songs, but I also witnessed many intimate moments in which he was working a small group of little ones, showing them painting techniques. He’s a natural leader and was also outspoken from day one of how Azraq Camp artists need support. For Max Frieder & Joel Bergner (Co-Executive Directors of Artolution), Mohammed holds the key to future programming in the camp. Two other artists, Samir and Ismail, were also great guys, and we enjoyed getting to know them. We are dedicated to setting up a youth arts program with the three of them this upcoming summer 2018. 

Standout participants:

One 11-year-old boy named Mahmoud had actually worked on a past project with Max several years ago. He was excited to be involved again, and was very affectionate with us and even protective, often making other kids leave us alone when they were being particularly mischievous. Noor, a girl who may have been about 12, was also very affectionate and joyful, always enthusiastically engaged in the project. She often invited us to tea, so we ended up meeting many members of her family. One teenage girl, who ended up being the subject for one of the murals, Dareen, had many interesting contributions to the mural ideas as well as the painting and was one of the girls chosen to be interviewed for the Global Citizen film.

Our Current Status: Both Max Frieder & Joel Bergner (Co-Executive Directors of Artolution) did a series of projects with Syrian refugee youth from 2013 to 2015, in partnership with local artists, educators, and several NGO’s. These experiences provided much of the inspiration and direction that led us to start our organization. In the summer of 2017, we implemented projects in the Za’atari refugee camps with IRC and NRC, the Azraq camp with IRC and in host communities with GIZ. We got funding from IRC to continue the projects in Azraq led by our local artist team with whom we had worked in the past. However, this project did not end up working out due to unexpected roadblocks. Several of our artists were working with another NGO, Care International, and under UNHCR rules, refugees cannot work under contract with more than one NGO at a time. We were unable to find solutions that were sufficient to our IRC contacts. This situation was made more challenging because we were no longer on the ground in Jordan, and were attempting to work it out remotely. This experience has taught us that we need a program coordinator based locally who speaks both Arabic and English and knows the lay of the land. The coordinator would set up projects, find solutions to problems as they arise, and would facilitate the communication between us, the host organizations and the artists. We have a couple of people in mind.

This coming summer 2018, we will once again be working with GIZ in their schools in host communities, this time with a specific training element built into the program. Our work will likely last about one month starting in mid- August. Following this, we will be working in Azraq camp and potentially Za’atari as well. We have raised project-specific funds through GlobalGiving for this specific purpose. GIZ does not work in the camps, but we have many potential organizations to partner with, such as IRC, NRC, Mercy Corps, UNICEF and Save the Children. The specifics of our work in the camps will be decided in the coming months. Our goal is to train local artists, including some of those who we worked with in the past as well as new ones. We hope to hire a program coordinator and set up a small team of artists who will implement a series of projects after we leave.

Thank You For Helping Us Transform Lives Through Public Art!

Links:

• Artolution