Current volunteers in the MENA region

Since the start of February six young Danes have been placed in the MENA region in three different organizations which all aims at empowering youth.

Marie Louise is with the organization “Ajiyal” in Lebanon – a NGO comprised of volunteers working for Palestinians in and outside the camps in Lebanon.

Mette is with Sharek in Ramallah – a NGO that works to enhance Palestinian society by engaging young people as active participants in all sectors of society.

Rasmus and Nikolaj together with the two Norwegian girls Elise and Björghild are with the International Palestinian Youth League (IPYL) in Hebron, which operates on the domains of education, cultural and inter-cultural learning.

Are you interested in being a volunteer in the MENA region? More information at:

http://www.ms.dk/sw120158.asp

Postcard from Rasmus and Nikolaj in Hebron

Hi! – Here is a glimpse into our work so far.

We have both been volunteers in the “Palestine Child Club in Hebron”, which cooperate with IPYL. It is a center for young people, which mainly aims at promoting educational opportunities for youth and teach children in using computers. Many of the employees are also associated at a local radio station or make small documentaries. The place is also hosting a lot of meetings with university students and PA-people from several ministries, where the possibilities of improving the educational life and the life of youth in general are discussed. 

We choose this place, because of the material from IPYL, which was a very professional description of the youth center, which convinced us that this place could give us the possibility to help with the daily work and ‘make a difference’. We were both interested in working with children so it seemed obvious.

It has been a month since we arrived, and we are the only volunteers at the center. In the start it was a bit difficult to find out how to help the permanents in the best way. The solution turned out to be starting up small projects by our self. So far we have done basketball training and showed movies, and we now have a solid crowd of faithful children which show up after school.

Our decision on going to Palestine is a combination of a political and a historical interest in the country, to live in a country away from home and to experience an area marked by conflict on our own. It was very important for us to visit the country, see the situation with our own eyes. In this way we hope to get a more real and neutral view of the political conflict, which we think is often covered in a pro-Israeli way in the Danish media.