LEBANON-CHILDREN WORKSHOP Lebanese-Italian initiative offers children social services and theatre activities

Record ID: 174323

  • Title: LEBANON-CHILDREN WORKSHOP Lebanese-Italian initiative offers children social services and theatre activities
  • Date: 17th November 2014
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF CHILDREN PERFORMING
  • Embargoed: 2nd December 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA6ERFOATX4W1VV2WZ262R0DSYP
  • Story Text: In the northern Lebanese town of Bebnine, entertainment is being combined with child development to make the community more 'child-friendly'.
    The joint program, organised by the Lebanese Centre for Active Citizenship (LCAC) in co-ordination with the Italian embassy in Lebanon, aims to get young people more involved in social life.
    As part of the project, a group of children, many of them orphans, engage in a number of social and cultural activities that allows them to express themselves through dance, sport, and theatre.
    The children also form a shadow municipality council to give them an insight into how community issues are managed.
    The Children's Municipality Council meets each week to pitch their 'child-friendly Bebnine' ideas, which could eventually become real solutions.
    "We are working on the project with the Italian embassy in Lebanon and in co-ordination with the Ministry of Social Affairs. The project brings together a number of children as part of a municipality council for children, which is a well-organised council that holds regular meetings. We train children on various number of activities so that, at the end of the project, we can come up with a concrete idea that can be implemented in Bebnine," said Maher Awad, a Lebanese activist and member of the Lebanese Centre for Active Citizenship.
    Social and physical development is an important part of the program.
    Along with the weekly council meetings, the children are encouraged to take part in a number of different sport and recreational events.
    "We started the project about eight or nine months ago, we organised many activities including training on active citizenship, the protection of the environment as well as training on children mental health. We also organised a sports day entitled 'Old Times Games' and today, we engaged two Italian trainers to train children on citizenship interaction through social theatre," Awad said.
    As part of the program, two theatre teachers from the Italian association Deposito Dei Segni held an eight-day workshop where the children were invited to develop a play to voice their demands.
    "For our work especially, it is a kind of theatre work to make, to give tools to the children to use, to have more tools to play their role in the municipality councils of children and youth," said Jorg Grunert, one of the workshop teachers.
    The play was made up of a group of 20 children, which included 11 members of the shadow municipality council, along with 13 young people from local orphanages.
    "Today, we are performing a play that expresses children's need for a safe amusement park in which they can play in safely, and not on the road. My goal is to make parents, as well as the head of the municipality, aware of the importance of establishing an amusement park that would help prevent children from going out on the streets and getting hit by cars, and ot would also prevent them from going outside their town because the situation is not really safe now. The amusement park or the public park will help children stay in their town so that, whatever happens with them, people and parents are around," said Rabiha, one of the children performing in the play, during rehearsals.
    Dib Mohammed Al-Kessar, a representative of Bebnine municipality was among the audience and has been following the progress of the shadow council.
    He said the children had come up with some good ideas.
    "Some of their demands have already started to be implemented such as the public park, we started implementing it and the project is now half-way through. We are also receiving some Emirate funding from His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Ben Zayed that will help asphalt some roads. The labour ministry has also promised us to asphalt some roads, and UNICEF provided us with a solution for the trash problems. So, some of our problems will be resolved, we can't say all of them, but many of them will be resolved," Kessar said.
    The program will continue in the New Year, Awad said, where the children's council will be able to see how their ideas are implemented.
    Grunert said similar programs will soon be rolled out in the Lebanese towns of Rashaya Al Wadi and Tyre.
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