Young people from Al-Qaa, North-Bekaa-valley, trained children in conflict prevention measures. Beforehand, they acquired skills as long-term mediators of peace.

The youth used different didactic methods to playfully convey concepts and terms related to conflict prevention and human rights.

Major Bachir Matar was also enthusiastic about the project.

Before and after the community project: Its aim is not only to change the appearance of the village Al-Qaa but also to raise awareness for projects concerning refugees such as the one the KAS conducted.

The teenagers documented the workshops with pictures and videos. In a training prior to the project, they had already learned about media and photography.

It was a real community project: Everyone including the young people, the graffiti-artist as well as employees of KAS and Dawaer painted and sprayed on the walls.

Major Bachir Matar even participated himself.

As the final point of a project organized by the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation (KAS) in cooperation with the NGO Dawaer on behalf of the Bernhard-Vogel-Foundation, the participating youth managed a training in conflict prevention with around 20 children from Al-Qaa. The total project lasted several months and had the goal to teach Syrian and Lebanese teenagers skills with regard to human rights, conflict and racism as well as to bring together both groups. The trained youth will function as multiplier in the future, since they can pass on their newly learned skills independently.

During the workshop the Lebanese and Syrian volunteers imparted knowledge about conflict prevention and human right on the children in a playful way. In doing so they used several didactic methods such as role plays, short movies about bullying and pantomime.

The volunteers could draw on skills, which they had acquired in the previous stages of the project. Those stages included a training of the youth in December 2017 and workshop organized by themselves with around 80 children in February 2018. All in all around 20 volunteers have been trained during the project.

After the workshop, a community project took place, during which graffiti-artist Ahmad Mazloum created interactive wall paintings and drawings. During the projects, the young people helped him to paint some of the five walls in total (three big ones and two smaller ones) at public places in Al-Qaa. The young people not only participated in the painting, but also documented the work with videos and photos. Last year, they took part in workshops of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the NGO Dawaer concerning media and photography.

The graffiti show a traditional situation – two women baking bread together – as well as four interactive pictures allowing the viewer to either become a puppet of two larger-than-life hands, to turn into an angel by standing between two wings, to blow away a dandelion, or to receive a bouquet of flowers.

Among other things, the community program intended to attract tourists and to promote conflict prevention projects in neighboring regions with a high population of refugees. Unfortunately, the Syrian teenagers, who had already attended the KAS media training beforehand, could not partake in the graffiti-project because an infectious skin disease had broken out in their refugee camp.

The reason for the engagement in Al-Qaa was a series of suicide attacks in the village during the summer of 2016, which severely strained relations between Lebanese inhabitants and Syrian refugees living there. The conflict prevention project was able to build a foundation of trust for overcoming these tensions and to train young people as long-term mediators of peace. Nevertheless, further projects will be needed to stabilize the developing trust between Syrian refugees and Lebanese youth in the long run.