Project Souarna - Phase 1

Project Souarna is a photography program designed to foster youthleadership and creativity. We will be conducting workshops for Iraqiand Palestinian youth living in refugee camps in Amman, Jordan. Thisproject can only exist through your generous donations. Please helpProject Souarna offer assistance to the immense needs of refugees.

The goal of Project Souarna is to provide refugee youth living inAmman, Jordan the opportunity to expand their creative and journalisticskills by way of photography.
By teaching photography to youth we are able to catch a glimpse oftheir reality as well as provide a rare lens that exposes the humanitythat exists within large numbers of displaced peoples.

Jordan hosts the largest refugee population in the Middle East, withnumbers swelling to almost half the country’s total inhabitants. Alarge number of the refugee populations are children. Most childrenattend the facilities of Relief International, housed in various campsaround Amman.
Despite the efforts of organizations working in the camps, moreresources are required to serve the extreme population size. The influxof Iraqi refugees since 2003 has magnified the needs of refugeecommunities.
Project Souarna focuses on photography because it is a tool that can beemployed as a technical skill as well as an opportunity to drawattention to often neglected voices.

Project Souarna will begin in mid July 2009. For one month, studentswill participate in an intensive photography course led by professionalinternational photographers and artists. Upon completion of the coursethe instructors will leave the students to capture their lives. Threemonths after the end of the project, the photographers will reunitewith the same students in Amman to critique and exhibit the studentphoto essays. After the initial launch exhibition in Amman, the exhibitwill travel to various cities throughout the U.S.
All donations made to Project Souarna are tax-deductible. Our fiscalsponsor is Alternative Intervention Models (AIM), a Los Angeles-basedorganization that works with urban youth and the arts.

The structure of the workshop is sculpted in the spirit of leadershiptraining programs. The goal of the curriculum is to teach futureteachers (students in the workshops), equipping the youth with thetools to continue the program after the end of their training. Ourcurriculum is built to foster individual creativity and leadership. Weseek to encourage youth participation in the organizational process,further influencing their leadership capabilities.

At the end of the project, students in the current course will have theopportunity to carry on the project in the future at the ReliefInternational facilities. RI has agreed to continue to open the spaceand house the equipment, allowing it to remain accessible to the youthafter the workshop. This ensures the momentum from the workshop willnot be lost, as access to the materials will remain in theparticipants’ reach.