Education Palestine Project #38569

Support Storytelling By Women Living in Palestine

by femLENS MTU

Support Storytelling By Women Living in Palestine

Project Report | Nov 6, 2020
A year of challenges

By Jekaterina Saveljeva | femLENS Founder and Workshop Facilitator

Dear Friends and Supporters,

The year 2020 took us all by surprise, and has left deep marks on many lives. We hope that this email finds you well and your loved ones safe.

While our plans for the year were altered radically, we are happy to report that we have also managed to do some things as planned. In August 2015 we ran our first series of documentary photography workshops in Balgaddy, Dublin, Ireland, and to celebrate five years of community storytelling this August we self-published a book "Unlearning the Ordinary: through a lens for the commons". You can order the book at the link bellow, or download the PDF. We have also been running a small fundraiser to be able to send the book to libraries and community centres in the communities where the stories were made, and to photographic libraries and collections with the hope of addding diversity and alternative points of views of these historic times to important archives. We've printed 20 copies and are starting to prepare packages to go out soon!

We are also running a photo print sale to raise funds in solidarity with our workshop participants in Shatila refugee camp, Beirut, Lebanon. Lebanon has been through so much in the last year, and those who are most vulnerable in society, refugees, are struggling to stay afloat until the crisis ends. With the holiday season just around the corner, buying a photo print as a gift knowing that the proceeds will go towards supporting a refugee woman, is a good way to finish the year and celebrate the spirit of the season. Please share the link with people passionate about photography in your community. And if there is a photo on our website that you really like, feel free to reach out to us and we will gladly make a print of it for you!

We've also published many interesting articles which you can read on our website. One of them even offers tips on how to deal with stresss through photography. We hope that you enjoy reading the pieces by our thoughtful volunteers.

We're also happy to say that we've been selected to offer our workshops part of the TeachersRise project. If you work in education or know someone who does and who would benefit from such training, please feel free to share the link!

Finally, we are planning a Digital Photo Festival called HER|visual|STORY which will take place online between 25-28 November. We will be announcing the speakers and the program soon so follow our social media channels or check the website if you would like to participate!

Thanks again for being with us. Stay safe!
In Solidarity,
femLENS Team

Links:

Permalink

Jul 10, 2020
Education in time of pandemic

By Jekaterina Saveljeva | femLENS Founder and Workshop Facilitator

Dear Friends and Supporters. Since autumn 2019 we have been trying to get permission to enter Gaza to start our photography workshops with women living in Gaza. We have contacted various international organisations (mostly European aid groups but also an Israeli-Palestinian access group) and individuals working in media as well as human rights defenders. We have also reached out to both the Estonian embassy in Israel and the Israeli embassy in Estonia, and the Israeli border agency.

The replies were different. From refusal from some Israeli agencies with no explanation, to no answers from others. Some have explained to us that to get approval to enter Gaza, we need to register femLENS in Israel, however Israel hasn’t been accrediting new NGOs to work in Gaza for several years already. We really appreciate those who replied and tried to give us some information. Others said "It is almost impossible for foreigners to get permission to enter Gaza... " and "it is highly unlikely that she can get to Gaza under the current stringent blockade."

So around February 2020 we felt that we had reached a deadend. After a long discussion and consultations with different parties we decided to move ahead and had agreed to consider conducting our workshops in the West Bank (I had also been invited to participate in a photo event organised by the EU in the West Bank). It could have been a stepping stone for us to get access to Gaza in the future. However, now with the global lockdown, the West Bank is also inaccessible, and this project will have to be placed on hold until the situation in the world improves.

But even in the midst of the pandemic we have been working hard. Earlier this year we organised a series of online documentary photography workshops for Palestinian women living in Isreal, with the help of Tsipi Karlik, an Isreali documentary short film maker. We found that while working online may be a good solution in some situations, we faced some technological challenges from the start that could not be resolved. You can read about the experience here.

Another problem that online workshops cannot not fix is the language barrier. During our real-world workshops we have someone who speaks the language of the participants to translate simultaneously which has always worked perfectly. Eventually we had to suspend these workshops.

However, one of the women who signed up for the femLENS workshops but couldn’t participate because she doesn't speak English was Nivin. She is 22 years old and lives in the north Jordan Valley. Nivin has so much to share. She has been sending us photographs and comments about her photos. We use a translation site to translate her comments for the photographs, and sometimes guide her photo taking. We are building a website which we will continue to update with Nivin’s photos so you can see into the world of Palestian women through their own eyes.

When the situation in the world stabilises, we will continue to make every effort to work with Palestinian women face to face, be it in Gaza or the West Bank. As for now, we will continue to empower women online. Please stay with us for updates on our achievements and support our efforts by spreading the word about our work.

Stay safe, and thanks for being with us!
Best wishes,
Jekaterina

Links:

Permalink

Mar 16, 2020
Thanks for believing that women's stories matter!

By Jekaterina Saveljeva | femLENS Founder and Workshop Facilitator

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.