'20 trainees and 50 children'

The training took place in Lebanon, where it all started three years ago. Since then, we worked in many different regions in Lebanon. We ran projects in various Palestinian and Syrian refugee camps and marginalised communities in the Bekaa valley, Beirut, Tripoli and Akkar.

The center of our partner organisation Ruwwad Lebanon is located right in the middle of two communities in Tripoli, Jabal Muhsen and Bab El-Tebbaneh. These two rival communities have been in armed fights and clashes since the end of the civil war in Lebanon (1990). You can still see the scars of violence when you look at the buildings next to the Ruwwad center.

In the midst of the turbulence tearing at these two poverty-stricken and marginalized neighboring communities, and in spite of the sectarian and political conflict between them, Ruwwad managed to secure a building in the street that divides the two neighborhoods, and placed an entrance on each side of the building, providing both communities with access to the center and a sense of ownership. Scholars began to do four hours of community service per week under the guidance of the Ruwwad team, mindful of the special circumstances that define the two communities while simultaneously striving to break the molds of animosity that had been cast.

We trained a new team of the youth scholars from Ruwwad. We have been working with Ruwwad Lebanon for quite some time now. This was the 5th training in their center and one of our wishes came true this time. We were able to combine old and new Sounds of Change trainees in one training, because we strongly believe that peer to peer earning is more effective than only learning from us.

We worked with a group of 20 youth volunteers, who work or will start working with children and other youth on a regular basis. The group consisted of new volunteers and people who participated in our training before. Our translator, Jawhara, is one of them. She is an old Ruwwad volunteer and participated in three levels of training with us before. A very strong and inspiring young woman. Other old ‘Ruwwaders, as they call themselves, that participated in trainings with us before, popped in and out the training when they had the chance.

This fantastic combination of young and highly motivated people learned and developed much faster than we were used to. They wrote a new Ruwwad song, they developed and facilitated a creative music workshop for children and on the last day they performed a 30 minutes performance with 50 children from their community. Everything was composed and led by themselves, during the performance we were only playing some instruments to accompany them. All of this in only five days. We are so proud.