Filming the LNPI members for the short-film

We finally agreed to enrich the ruches of the short film by interviewing LNPI members who had participated in the school activities during the war. Chirine Abou Chakra kindly accepted  and started filming the interviews (based on the encounter theme between the LNPI members and the displaced children).

Meeting to edit the short-film

Hania, Valery V, Jihad and Jihan met with Rania El Rafei (a documentalist and cineast) to watch the footage and discuss what could be done for the short film project.

Rania and Chirine Debs are willing to help us with the editing and will start working on it this Monday with Valery V. We’re thinking of presenting the short film to Namleh At3a  project  “Shoot the War” (deadline: September 1st). For more info on Namleh at3a, check out their blog:  www.namlehat3a.blogspot.com

Building houses for peace

Several weeks back, Serge came up with a very interesting idea, a new project. He wanted the kids to build a house. The idea was to show them how hard it is to build and easy it is to destroy.  

While we had shelved that project to concentrate on the short-film project we had already started, Valérie V. gave that project a little thought and contacted a person who could donate the material for the building of a small house. That person owns a firm that builds wooden houses. Following their meeting, he had asked his architects to work on smaller versions of the houses he usually builds. The smaller hourses (around 9 m2 each) would be easy for children to build. He offered to donate 4 or 5 of them small houses.

Brainstorming session

What were we to do with this project? Should we go on with it or leave it for some other time? How should we proceed? What message do we want to convey? What exactly did we want to do? These are some of the questions we discussed today. Serge was adamant about working on a clear message that would come out of that project. We all agreed he was right and started to discuss the possibilities that layed open to us.

Who should we partner ourselves with? Katia had proposed we work with the children she was intending to work with in Haret Hreik. But that raised a sensitive political issue because she suggested we work in the FPM’s tent there. This could associate us with a political party even though we are non-affiliated. Our other option is to contact a person we know from the municipality of Haret Hreik… We thought of working with schools in the South through other NGOs… 

What will the children put in the houses? What do we want them to work on exactly? Should all the groups work on the same themes or should every house have a theme?  Here are a couple of themes we thought of: tolerance, peace, war, things lost.

The material we have for a short-film

Diala, Hania, Jihad, Lamia, Serge, Siham, Valerie C. & Valerie V. met today to film the school for the last time and to gather and bring back the material we had left there. The last occasion we had to work with the children was on Monday, the day the cessation of hostilities took effect. That day, the numbers were halved. Many families had gone back home to the South or Dahié. Withstanding the decline in numbers, the activities went along very well. We worked on character movements and the children drew and cut off their own characters.On Wednesday, we discovered the school vacant. All the displaced families had left the premises; Even those who had no home to go to. We didn’t have access to the storage room, so we thought of coming back, setting back our “stage” for the last time and filming it. We knew that we couldn’t pursue our project. We didn’t have enough material to make a short animated film. But we didn’t want to leave it there. We thought about working with the material we had shot and the one we had created with the children. So the first thing the group did was watch the scenes we had taped thanks to Valérie’s camera (on Thursday).

Friday. We went to the school to film it empty. We set up all the elements, recreated our workspace and disposed the material where it was last placed. We felt we were working with some ghosts of memory past… We missed the kids.

Saturday. We will be watching the rushes again with Rania R. and checking out some new footage shot by the IESAV. We’re not sure what theme we will be working on. It could be about our “encounter”, we could add some interviews with Katia, Lea, the crew…   

Rencontre à la municipalité de Beyrouth pour l’action « Des oliviers pour la paix »

Nous avons présenté à la municipalité de Beyrouth notre projet de planter des oliviers à la Place des martyrs – Place de la Liberté- comme symbole d’espoir, de solidarité, de vie et de construction de la paix. Nous avons envisagé cette action sous trois formes différentes, chacune engageant des acteurs différents (et impliquant un message distinct):

• Les ONG et la société civile : Chaque personne ou ONG pourra planter un olivier. Cette action souligne l’engagement individuel et une action personalisée (les oliviers seront de taille et d’âge différents.       
• Les municipalités libanaises : Les municipalités participantes planteront chacun un olivier, marquant la solidarité entre municipalités libanaises et leur engagement pour la paix. La dificulté dans cette action tient au fait que les municipalités libanaises, en dehors du cas des fédérations de municipalités, n’ont pas l’habitude de collaborer ensemble sur un projet commun.
• Les ambassades (notamment celles des pays du pourtour de la Méditerranée) : celle-ci devront envoyer un olivier adulte provenant de leur pays. Cette action conduit à une sorte de cristallisation d’un soutien et d’un engagement internationl pour la paix.

Le scénario 2 n’a pas été accueilli avec beaucoup d’enthousiasme! Par contre, l’option  où chaque ambassade  serait invitée à planter  un olivier -provenant de son propre pays-  reçut un écho bien plus positif. Mais le responsable municipale nous a dit qu’il préférait un monument. Et que la municipalité serait plus intéressé de faire cette action sur un terrain autre que celui de la Place des martyrs.

La prochaine étape serait de présenter à la municipalité un dossier détaillé concernant cette initiative… Mais le responsable municipal a insisté pour que ce dossier comprenne le numéro d’enregistrement de l’ONG.

New activities after the cease-fire?

The cease-fire seems to have put an end to several of our activities. Yesterday, when we went to Laure Mghaizel school, half of the children who we have been working with had gone back home to the South or to the southern suburbs. Many of those who stayed on were telling us that they would probably be leaving the next day (Tuesday 15th).

As for the psychological aid we’re offering to the volunteers working in relief operations, our session today will probably tell us if the program should be suspended. Judging from a group of volunteers I interact with on daily basis, there seems to be a general demobilisation amongst them. They too are tired and want to go back to the life they had before the war.

Some members of the LNPI will be meeting later today to assess the programs they have launched at the start of the war and to see if and how they could be followed.

We are currently thinking of new steps we should undertake.

1- The decision to institutionalise has been taken. We will be working on that this week.

2- New activities should be planned for. Up to now, we have come up with two projects: “Building peace, rebuilding Lebanon” (suggested by Serge a week ago), “Peace Mail” (suggested by Carla and Jihane three weeks ago).

Pour la commémoration du 12 juillet

L’idée c’est de montrer que cette guerre est une tache noire dans l’histoire d’Israël parmi d’autres taches noires, et une tache rouge dans l’histoire du Liban qui souffre. Mais malgré l’amertume dans notre coeur il y a une tache blanche, d’espoir, d’amour pr le Liban, de résistance, d’humanité…

J’imagine plein de journaux étalés sur la place, deux tas séparés.
Sur le premier tas on jette un pot de peinture noire afin de former une grande tache noire avec d’autres taches noires derrières (qui représentent les autres atrocités et guerres d’Israël)
Sur l’autre tas, qui représente le Liban, on jette un pot de peinture rouge, et on dessine en noir le pourtour d’un grand coeur, et puis on fait une tache de peinture blanche à l’intérieur…

Carla

Shall we institutionalise?

We have been active for almost a month now, and the dynamic we’ve created around us is very positive, I believe. If we want to sustain it, we might have to institutionalise our grouping, don’t you think?

I’ve got all the relevant documents for the creation of an NGO, should we go ahead and do it?Here are a couple of things we need:

-        Five people to form the founding team: each should present an ikhraj eid, sijl 3adli, cv (in english or french will do), and a copy of their diplomas.

-        Bylaws (aims, rules and regulations).

-    A rented or owned property in the name of the NGO

Heal the wounded peace dove

We have a logo that we’re very proud of. It delivers our message quite unambiguously: Peace through solidarity.

Why not create a mascot? 

But why not take our message a step further? Why not create a mascot? Not really to bring us luck but to embody our message, to make it even clearer especially to the children.What better mascot that a dove to represent our quest for peace, but it cannot be an ordinary dove because of all the killings, all the destruction, all the suffering and all the hate that is being sown. The dove we see as a possible mascot is wounded and has a broken wing.When taken to children, we could ask them to help us heal the peace dove. What do you think of the idea? I know just the person who would be willing to help us build a human sized dove. Shall we go for it?

A week through the short-film project

• Friday, August 4th: First contact with the children

Carla, Elsa, Jihad, Lamya, Raed, Siham and Valérie head out to Laure Mghaizel School for girls to start the animated short film project.

Our program wasn’t set yet, we weren’t exactly sure about the short-film’s general theme, we had no contacts with the neighbourhood kids and no technical team for the animated pictures. But we knew we had to act, to start, before the war waged on our country paralysed us.

And so we did.

We had planed to work with some 15 to 20 displaced kids whose age varied from 10 to 13. Instead, we had over 40 kids of an even more varied age, the youngest no older than 3.

We had to adapt, to organise ourselves accordingly, dividing the kids into two distinct groups: those over the age of 10 would work on the animation project; those under 10 would have more recreational activities.

• Monday, August 7th:  Searching for a story… but not going very far

Alain, Diala and French Valérie join the team. 

Nadia from Skoun donates to us material to work with: colouring books, pencils, wax crayons, play-dough, balloons and little toys.

Creating a working space. We decided to modify the area we are doing our activities in by bringing down a couple of desks for the children to draw on, and by separating with a white transparent film the project area from the recreational area. That completely changed the whole space, and the way the children and their parents relate to it.

• Wednesday, August 9th: Explaining the project and the animation technique

Elyssa, Nathalie and Roger join the team

Mireille donates cardboards, boards, white paper roll, coloured paper, scissors and sketchbooks.

With new volunteers joining us, we decided to work with smaller groups and subgroup. French Valérie decided to add a mime show to the younger crowd’s activities, and Roger, who is a professional child animator helped her out in the translation and animation. Their act was a great success.

Thanks to the input of Elyssa and Diala, the animation technique session went well. We got our message through.