Live Together Summer Camp
In 2008 HSA, the Father Ibrahim and the Samaritan youth club came up with the Idea of this ambitious and innovative project to provide young people of Nablus: Muslims, Christians, and Samaritans able to live their lives of kids without worrying about the war, occupation and violence. The project focuses on the child's needs and responds through socio-cultural animation.
The aim of this project is to maintain and to perpetuate the idea of the live together and to improve the communication, despite the occupation playing on the division of the community which always lived together in Nablus. During two weeks, children will share the richness of their different cultural backgrounds, and open their eyes in a different way on their society and their city.
The days will be divided into 2 parts: group activities during the morning including: Manual crafts, drama, sports, writing, psychological workshops and music. The afternoon will be dedicated to a common big activity, such as: cinema show, aquatic games, tournament, public garden, visit of the old city of Nablus. This way the children will get in touch with their city and its inhabitants, to see, touch and use all their senses in getting familiar with the place they lived in all their lives and still to be able to see it through the eyes other people and religions who love it just as much.
Each workshop will follow a sequence of creativity and self expression and give each one the chance to be a unique part of the workshop and its activities. All this will be turned into something tangible at the final show.
The method is based on helping the children to explain their feelings and emotions in order to avoid emotional closure and, in the worst case, potential incoming syndromes. We believe that everything that happens outside has a reflection inside. Our body, as a unique system with heart, mind, and soul needs to be expressed out again. When it doesnt work, we create an "unfinished business", which has to be solved. The more time it passes without dealing with it, the more difficult it will be. So, as its said "practice makes perfect", what a better time to teach ourselves how to deal with all the changes around us than the age of childhood.
That is our mission, the goal of the Summer camp; living together. We want to bring out the best in those children, to bring them together as Palestinians, to prepare them for the world of tomorrow by helping them get through the world of today, and to bring them and us joy reflected by the smile on their angelic faces throughout the camp.
Dance Camp 2009
Every year we try to propose a different theme of summer camp, as last year was the clown, we chose dance this year. The idea came out from our previous experience of Dabkeh group. Dabkeh is the national dance of Palestine; its the traditional folk dance of the Levant. It is a dance of solidarity and a way of expressing nationalism and the age-old presence of art and culture in a positive way. But, as any nationalist activity, we do not want that it takes on a separatist meaning, it has to be open to other cultures. This is why we also want to develop other traditional dances in this activity.
The dance group was based on dabkeh dance and was enriched by different dances, and corporal expression ways such as: African dance, Indian dance, clown dance, etc.
Our aim was to help children to escape their inhibitions, dare what they don't usually do, be extravagant and enjoy, move freely.
The summer dance camp took place every morning during 3 weeks. Children where divided into 5 groups, they met each other, practiced dance, created elaborate choreography, made elaborate costumes, chose the music they wanted to dance to and they had group discussions facilitated by a psychologist.
Each workshop (6 workshops in total) was a sequence of creativity and self expression since each child had the chance to be a unique part of the workshop and its activities. This was all turned into a final show where the participants performed all their hard work to an audience of friends, family and teachers.
The show itself was extremely important because it shows the results of all the members hard work, work for which they experienced fun andwhich they where proud of.
