Al-Basma Association concludes the «Week of Smiles» initiative in Gaza governorate schools

Within the initiative “The Week of the Smile with the Basma Association”, the Basma Association for Culture and Arts, in partnership with Pal-Think for Strategic Studies and FXB, concluded a series of big-mouth puppet-theatre shows in the primary schools of the East and West Gaza governorates. These shows, which come within the project “Restoring hope to the youth and children of Gaza after the war” — which comes as an emergency intervention after the latest aggression on the Gaza Strip in May 2021 — the initiative aims to offer psychological-support services to the children of the Gaza Strip through puppet-theatre shows, through which the children are equipped with many skills that contribute to lightening their load amid their difficult conditions and empowering them with individual and collective skills that contribute to building their characters positively — such as the strategies of positive thinking, imagination, self-expression, cooperation, interaction, and also concentration. Interactive activities were carried out with the children to discuss the show, its aim, and the set of values gained from it, through the show's presenters discussing the theatrical show's characters and their behaviours — in addition to many psychological-release activities and recreational activities that contribute to bringing the child out of the circle of the difficult psychological conditions that had affected them before.

For her part, the initiative's coordinator Ms Rania al-Shurayhi affirmed there is a pressing necessity for those efforts exerted to network with the schools and carry out extracurricular activities, making clear in her words: “Children, in this period of time specifically, are in dire need of an outlet to relieve them from the circle of pressures they lived after the experience of the latest aggression on the Strip — many of these children saw harsh scenes that had affected their spirits, such as the scenes of bombardment, destruction, and rockets, and many of them also witnessed the loss or wounding of a member of their family, their relatives, or their neighbours; and this in turn affected their school attainment and their level of concentration — which many of the targeted schools' teachers confirmed during the coordination of the shows.

She affirmed that the importance of those activities lies in their contributing to developing the child's capacity to express their different feelings of anger, joy, sadness, and fear, and contributing to developing their language skills through the language of dialogue practised by the theatrical show's presenters. In addition, the shows offered contribute to strengthening memory, concentration, and attention in the children through the wonderful, engaging scenario presented — which reflected clearly through the children's positive interaction with those shows.

Al-Shurayhi added that she received many calls from school administrations across the governorates of the Gaza Strip inviting the carrying out of such shows — and this reflects the extent of those schools' need for such extracurricular activities on one side, and the extent of the theatre's success as an important and necessary recreational means in the child's life on the other.

It is recalled that this series of shows targeted the children in the schools located in the areas that were most exposed to bombardment in the latest aggression on the Gaza Strip in May 2021, and likewise targets the children resident in those areas who were directly affected by the aggression's conditions, whether psychologically or physically.