Despite the awful weather....

Our project started on Thursday the 14^th of March in the countryside in the East Sussex, where the Palestinian women and the British buddies spent the weekend all together in a Scout Residency. Despite the awful weather, we had a great time together. We had the time to know each other, cooking and working together, and above all to talk and listen about Palestine and about the project we were going to develop during the following week. It was a very powerful and intensive start. We had the chance to share our experiences and to develop the feeling of being part of a group.

After leaving the Residency, we went first to Brighton, where some of the Palestinian women gave their speeches at the local University about different issues related to life in Palestine, and in the evening we came back to London.

During the week we were divided into four different groups, consisting of three Palestinian women and three British buddies.

Each group had a different plan for the week, which consisted of meetings in women’s centres, schools and universities, where the Palestinian women talked about the suffering of their country. I was part of the blue team, and during the week we went to Hopscoth Asian Women’s Centre, to the Institute of Education and to the British Somali Centre. We met different audiences, such as Bangladeshi and Somali women and young students from Britain. With a different attitude, they all shared a strong interest about Palestine. Some of them found common issues between problems affecting Palestine and their country of origin, some others were impressed by the reports of what is going on in Palestine. We also took part in some fundraising events organised by other groups on behalf of CADFA to support this project. We found a very warm welcome from all these parts and an increasing number of people interested in getting involved in CADFA projects.

During the week all the groups worked on another project too. Every day in the afternoon we met at the City Learning Centre to work on an animation movie project. Each group chose a story and made the puppets and the backgrounds, which in the end were shot and edited in a final movie. The link between our stories was Palestine and women. Although we had a very short time to work on this project, the result was a very powerful short animated movie. Our group chose, for example, to represent the issue of the pregnant women who are forced to give birth at the checkpoints.

This was the first project I got involved with CADFA and it was a very intensive and interesting start. Comparing the experiences of other girls of about my age from Palestine with mine was a very useful yardstick to understand how life in Palestine is. Furthermore, it was a good opportunity for CADFA to get known by more people.