TRAINING WORKSHOP LEADERS – Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)In October, 2008, supported by grants from Oxfam-Novib, the Dutch Children’s’ Stamps Foundation (SKN) and the Solidarity Fund, MwB launched its first project in the Palestinian Territories, a training program for young Palestinian musicians in MwB workshop techniques. The cultural centers in the Azzeh, Deisha and Aida refugee camps in Bethlehem, as well as the Holy Land Trust, a non-profit humanitarian organization dedicated to strengthening and improving the lives of children, families and communities, serve as MwB’s partners. They provide logistical, translation and administrative support, recruit trainees and offer space for workshops and training sessions.From 21-24 October 2008, trainers Otto de Jong, Marijke Smedema and Sherwin Kirindongo worked intensively with fifteen young men and women from the Aida, Deisha and Azzeh camps, introducing them to MwB’s methodologies for working with children in stressed circumstances. Over the course of this first week of training, it was apparent that the trainees were experiencing something quite extraordinary. Although the musical backgrounds of the trainees was diverse-- from self-taught to conservatory students-- each became passionate about the possibility of contributing to their own communities by bringing the joy of music to children whose lives offer too little.
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Since 1 November 2008, Fabienne van Eck, musician and co-founder of the Silwan Music School for children in a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem, has supervised and evaluated the trainees’ progress weekly as they practiced giving workshops to children in their respective camps. Additional training weeks are scheduled through the spring of 2009. The session scheduled for January, postponed to February because of the Israeli incursion into Gaza, will feature a training team of Otto de Jong, Amir Bašić, project manager of Music Bus Srebrenica, and Baya Čorlija, director of Musicians without Borders Bosnia-Herzegovina. Having launched the Palestinian segment of the project, MwB staff are working with schools in the Netherlands to lay the foundation for a parallel project using the same training materials and music. In the course of the project, we expect to set up internet links between Dutch schools, Music Bus Srebrenica and the Bethlehem cultural centers so that the children from vastly different circumstances and cultures can share the experience of music. During the next two project years, we plan to continue to work with the Bethlehem trainees and also to open another training program elsewhere in the OPT.
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more information:
Marijke Smedema, 