Cultural session: «Creativity despite the odds»

The Youth Forum for Reconciliation and Tolerance organised a cultural session titled “Creations despite the challenges”, carried out by the Bunyan Association for Training, Evaluation, and Communal Studies, with the session held in the hall of the Khan Younis Youth stadium. This event comes within the Youth Forum's activities within the project “Strengthening democracy and the principles of communal awareness”, funded by the European Endowment for Democracy (EED). The encounter aimed to present some of the problems youth face in the Gaza Strip, embodied in their exploitation by some institutions and companies, the draining of their energies, and the failure to grow and develop them.

The ceremony was opened with a word by the evening's implementers, the Bunyan Association, making clear the responsibility with which it works to shed light on youth's issues and strengthen their steadfastness through presenting their talents and supporting them — a matter that stimulates them to organise purposeful artistic performances deserving of adoption by the local institutions; and affirming their pursuit of growing and developing youth talents despite the political and social challenges facing them. In the word of the Youth Forum for Reconciliation and Tolerance, support for these talents was affirmed, and the work to shed light on the issue of the exploitation of youth in all walks of life.

The session was interspersed with many segments, such as: poetry recitals, performances of popular dabke and dahiyya, and the theatrical sketch that discussed the issue of the exploitation of volunteer youth in the institutions and companies in the Gaza Strip, calling for the demanding of their rights and the finding of solutions for their problems. The attendees — composed of youth of different political, cultural, and social frames of reference — engaged, expressing their admiration for this session, showing their support for it, and their desire to attend and take part in other coming encounters.