Last Sunday, 7amleh concluded a digital media training course on “Tools for Digital Community Activism” in Dheisheh, a camp for Palestinian refugees in Bethlehem. The course took place in cooperation with Ibda’a

Last Sunday, 7amleh concluded a digital media training course on “Tools for Digital Community Activism” in Dheisheh, a camp for Palestinian refugees in Bethlehem. The course took place in cooperation with Ibda’a.

The course was attended by a group of boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 15. Over the course of the 4 training meetings, they were exposed to the world of digital media, including digital expression through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud and blogs. The participants were taught how to use these platforms, both as individuals and as a group, to deliver a message and create social change. Participants were also taught about digital storytelling and the concept of citizen journalism.

During the course of the sessions, the group chose to focus their work on the people of the camp, highlighting their stories, suffering and their dreams of return using digital media, primarily through Facebook, SoundCloud and YouTube. The group began by establishing a Facebook page called “Dheisheh in Our Eyes”, which will publish images of the camp, pictures of camp graffiti, conversations with the Nakba generation and the camp youth, as well as quotations based on the question “What does the camp mean to you?” It is worth noting that ‘Tools for Digital Community Activism’ courses have been held in Nablus in cooperation with Palestine Vision, and will continue to take place in other Palestinian towns with the cooperation of locally-based institutions.