Exhibition at An-Najah University

The long-awaited finale of the university graphic novel is here and I have to say, its too soon. The students have worked day and night to finish their images. After contacting the local printing house, Hujawi Printers to scan the images and begin the process of digital editing to construct a compiled novel, the students eagerly got together to plan the exhibition at the university. With minimal materials to work with, we chose large, movable posting boards and black backdrops for each of the five-page stories.

With the help of Project Hope's directors Jeremy Wildeman (Canada) and Abdul-Hakim (Palestine), we sent out a massive press release to all major media in the region. I am pleased to say that not only did local media show up to report on the event but major Canadian media station, the CBC also came equipt with cameras and reporters. You can watch the clip at tp://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/making _canada_proud/project_hope_1.html

The exhibiton was a wild success with the room full of students, faculty, parents and foreign vistors. Each student was able to discuss their story with members of the public and receive a certificate of graduation from the course, delivered by Project Hope.

Comics Class at Dar Al-Fnon, in Nablus

Here are some images from my "good" comic class. By good I mean not only re the students exceptionally talented and quick to pick up on the concepts of comics, but also are very sweet, and mercifully quiet (in comparison to the controlled bedlam of my students at Al-Safeer). The first day was just introducing the medium to the students, and alot of them decided to draw stories about accidents for some reason.

The first class, unintentionally, had revolved around silent comics, so on Monday I focused on the interplay between words and pictures. The first exercise was the picture book creation described in this blog post, which was great. I didn't get any stories as creative as the one about the family factory or as touching as the lonely girl, but on the other hand they were very good at figuring out interesting ways to move the story foward, and immediatly grasped the interplay between text and images, going so far as to jump the lesson by incorparting dialogue (rather than simply the descriptions and prose story used in picture books). This was fine, as the next exercise I forced them to use panels with diagoue and panels with no text at all.

Today, the class focused around using different amount's of space or number's of panels to tell a story, as well as different angles that can be used to show a story. These were not quite as effective as before, but I think the students may have (hopefully) grasped the lesson itself, even if the execution of these ideas was not as great as some of their previous work.

Finally, they have begun drawing their final project: a great day in their life. This will use multiple panels and hopefully be a dynamic and creative final story.

Long Awaited Photos

Here finally are some of the long awaited promised photos. These first are from my semi-disastrous art class that I taught on the second day of class. First exercise was "I am emotion" and "I like _______". The pictures were supposed to depict them doing these things and feeling that emotion, but that didn't quite pan out. Some pretty pictures though.

Seeing the limitations of their English, I tried to teach them a basic lesson: conjugation of the verb "to be." Boy that was a disaster. They really did not want English lessons, because, as I later discovered it was not an English class, but an art one. Ah. Well, then I tried to teach some comics based lessons. As an example of sequential art, I drew a brief story on the board of me coming to Nablus. The first panel shows me boarding a plane, the second panel the plane in the air, and the third me arriving in Nablus. Simple enough, I thought. Instead, I got about 7 versions of this:

They all drew people getting on planes! Not the creative outpouring I was looking for. I did however elicit this striking image, making this class (the only one I taught) quite worth it:

Evidence: The true effects of war on children

Wednesday fortunately deserves little attention. My quiet talented comics class was unfortunately cancelled, leaving only my Photo Comics class. Normally this is a fantastic class, but the centre was making a huge racket by together flags and posters for some anniversary. This made the class almost impossible to teach. Nevertheless, the students did quite, experimenting with telling the story with the photos in front of the class, using props, and then Elena and I offering our thoughts. As frustrating a day as it was, it nonetheless highlights the changeable nature of events in Palestine. This is a teaching impediment for the most part, but helps to explain the somewhat chaotic nature of the education students receive, hardly surprising given how little control they often have of their own lives. As a teacher here, you really need to take fluctuating attendance, cancelled classes and outside distractions as a given, and plan accordingly.
Thursday was an exceptionally sucessful day. With the young comics students, I focused on teaching picture book style stories. I draw a distinction between comics and picture books. With picture books, a story is told through prose words, and is for the most part completely comprehensible were the story to be told without the pictures at all. The pictures serve to enhance the theme or tone of the story, as well as provide visual clues to the comprehension of the written text. Comics, by contrast, require the juxtaposition of words and images for comprehension. The tone of a person's voice or the setting of a scene is usually communicated entirely visually, with the only text being dialogue or occasional narration. It's a somewhat subtle distinction without examples in front of you, but in terms of how a story is told it makes a world of difference.

The lesson began with me reading a passage from Neil Gaiman's The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. I explained how the story can be understood entirely with words, and that the pictures just help. I then had the students write a four sentence story, entiteled "My Dad Goes to Work."

Most of the stories were pretty simple - Dad wakes up, dad eats, dad goes to work, dad comes home from work. I then had the students show me what they planned to draw, and then they drew it up on four full pages, with the text at the top. I also gave some suggestions - many drew near identical panels for dad going to and coming home from work, so I suggested some varriation, as well as occasional changes in the shot or encouraging the kids to use more of the whole page.

The exercise went really well, took up the whole class, and produced some excellent stories. Two bear special mention. The first was from my favorite student in the class, a girl of maybe 10 named Noor. She has grasped the concepts of comics so well, and always goes above and beyond the assignment specifications. In this case, she asked to do a story about a family at work. The first panel shows a family hard at work, with the text explaining they own a sucessful factory. On the second page, disaster strikes - a fire burns down the factory, and the excellently drawn firetruck is not enough to save the factory. Instead, the mother/wife goes to work as a lawyer, with the the final page showing the closeup of the mother, and explaining that due to her hard work the family was able to maintain a great standard of living. The art is really well drawn, but more importantly uses different angles/shots and really supplements the story. But I am most impressed with the story itself. I'm not sure whether it is real or fiction, but either way it is remarkably creative.

The second story I mention is somewhat less uplifiting. The art is not particuarly captivating - the dad driving away from the house for work, the girl alone in the home - but the text itself is heart-wrenching. The story goes approximately like this:

1. My dad doesn't love me he abandons me when he goes to work.
2. I hate my dad I wish he wouldn't leave me all alone.
3. I get very frightened when I am left all alone in the house.
4. I wish my dad loved me more and wouldn't work so much

Wow. I was really speechless. This is an issue that goes beyond checkpoints and explosions, and touches upon simple but none-the-less powerful childhood neglect. I'll speak about my thoughts on what are role is in this situation in a future post, but for those who have thoughts on how to approach this issue, please let me hear them.

Photo Comics & Toronto Star Visit

It's been a great and crazy two days. Yesterday, I had two different classes. The first one was another comics class, but a much smaller, older and calmer class. They're really nice and seem to grasp the concepts of narrative storytelling well. I'm going to introduce them to more complicated storytelling elements next class.

The second class was totally suberb. This is a class called "Photo-Comics" which is more or less what it sounds like: telling a story in comic like form (series of still images in panels) but with photographs. This means that there is no dialogue, and all the "art" are photographs. This also means that that not only do the students take the photographs, they come up with the story ideas, create the script, and star in the comics. It requires a combination of acting, scripting and photography skills, and was just something Elena and I dreamed up one night of chilling.

It turns out to be my favorite class. The students are they type a teacher dreams of. I pictched the concept to the local centre director, who absolutely loved it. He managed to get 50 applicants in one day, narrowed it down to the best 14 students. So they all are fluent in English, engaged with the idea, and a joy to teach.

Today was English and Comics again. Comics was a media circus. We had Oakland Ross from the Toronto Star come in, which was great. He is the Middle East Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star, which is big press for Project Hope. So this meant that there was Oakland Ross, his minder, Jeremy Wildeman (the executive director), Kevin (a prof from Toronto involeved with Project Hope), Rebecca who spoke to Oakland about the comics project, Elena + Josh, who were taking photos and videotaping, the local volunteer acting as a translator/co-teacher, and Heba, Hakim and Rachel the new volunteer seeing a class in action. Oh yeah, and I think me and my 15 students were there somewhere.

It was pretty crazy, but went pretty well. Rebecca had a long ass talk with Oakloand, and he seemed really enthusiatic, which was suprising to me for such a seasoned reporter. I also spoke to him, but I doubt I'll make much of an appearance. Rebecca could easily be the star.

More photos to come hopefully.

The Schedule and General Plans

Basically, Rebecca and I have split into two different but affiliated projects. Her University Course, which just concluded, focused on creating polished professional 5 page comics, getting the students to express themselves in English and understand the mechanics of the medium. The work was really fantastic, testament not only to the student's talent but Rebecca's teaching chops. Her remaining time here will be coordinating the publication, exhibition and promotion of the students work.

As for me, I am focusing more on younger kids. The objective here is not about creating a beautiful final comic that can be shown to the world, but rather for the kids to have fun and lighten the load of their stressful lives with creative expression. I teach two courses which are comic specific, which will be small fun exercises. If the students are really advanced, they may create more elaborate stories. I'm teaching a conventional English class, where comics might be used as a teaching tool, but are more likely to be sidelined in favour of games relating to basic vocabulary and using conversation. And finally, there is one final project, beginning tommorow, which I have dubbed photo comics. Co-taught with Elena (also co-teaching English) this will focus on using still images taking by photography in a sequence to tell a story. Basically, the photos operate like comic panels. The students will come up with a script, star in the comics themselves and take all the photos.

First Day of Class

I had my first official day of classes today, which went quite well. The first class was "comics," which I put in quotations only because whether it is an art course, or writing one, or an English one, is never fully clear. But the objective for me is for the students to be introduced to the medium, and creatively express themselves. We are exceptionally fortunate to have translators in the form of local (Palestitinan) volunteers. Mine is the wonderful Raed, who translated Rebecca's class, as well as being accompinied by Hiba, who is the coordinator for the programs that are not language lessons. Despite some small hiccups - students being 8-10 not 11-14 as planned, the power going out mid-class, and students arriving late - the class went really well. I had people explain the concept of comics, and then gave them a few to read. After that, it was a small exercise drawing a single panel, about something from their life. Talent and how well the students grapsed the material ranged tremendously, form one student turning the single panel handout into a three panel comic, completiting it 10 minutes, and then finishing two more exercises I gave her, while another student needed to be taught how to draw stick figures and said he didn't like me and wouldn't be coming back.

This shows one of the great difficulties of teaching - how to balance the needs of different students. One of them is so so good, and I don't want her to get bored and leave her behind. But if I give her extra treatment, I take away from the other students. Even giving her other activities means that the students sometimes do not want to finish the one she has completed. By contrast, the difficult student obviously has some trauma. He was quite aggressive, but said he didn't like any violence when I tried to engage him with Spiderman. So I sat down to teach him how draw stick figures, hoping he would feel better knowing how to draw. I tried to reassure the class that they could all draw better than me, but he said I could draw. Obviously he feels he can't. Boy do I sympathize. I really hope he comes back though.

The english class was somewhat more conventional, but it too had its quirks. Again, I had much help with the English coordinator Tharwa, my local translator Yasmeen, and another international, Elena from Spain. All were a great help, and though Tharwa will not be in the classes any,ore, Elena will co-teach with me with Yasmeen's translation. I had about 12 students who ranged from 6-12! This means that their levels were all over too. How do I possibly engage all the different students? I've somewhat abandonded using comics to teach them, as it requires some comibination of a more experinced teacher and greater english to get the full effect. Instead, I did fun exercises, going over numbers and expressions (happy/sad/angry) in games. The basic objective in this class is to get them really familiar with very basic conversational sentences, so they can engage foriegners. This will hopefully reinforce lessons they have already (in theory) learned, and make English seem fun.

The rest of the day consisted of finalizing projects for tommorow, a wonderful chat with Tharwa about the mechanisms of comics (someone please remind to write more about this!) and some chilling out.

One final thing: the students produced some great work. I will be sure to post some of their stuff when I have a chance to scan it.

Impressions of Rebecca's Class

I had the great pleasure of getting to see Rebecca's class, both in the finishing stages of the comics - inking and colouring - and on the final day. They were a really vibrant group of students who produced some tremendous artwork. The images Rebecca uploaded were my own poor photographs of the art, but by next week we will have high quality digital scans that will really show how fantastic their work is.

Like Rebecca, I am as much struck by the stories behind the work as the comics themselves. All of the comics are deeply personal, and most if not all are touch directly upon the occupation. I had the pleasure of getting to know the stories behind two of the comics, which I will post when in the days to come. For now, I leave you with one of my favorite images from the class. The anthropomorphic expressions are fantastic, and remind me favorably of the wonderful Blacksad. The IDF soldiers in particular are great.

The Last Week at An-Najah

With all the complications of teaching an art class in Nablus, we have finally come to the end of our course. The students are buisy inking their stories and revising text. The expression of accomplishment plastered across each of their eager young faces, is exhilerating to watch. Considering the students were for the most part, unfamiliar with this art form, their raw talent in this medium is surprising as was their ability to comprehend critical elements of sequential art in a matter of days. With only three weeks to complete the project, we began with some of the most famous graphic novels and studies the techniques of illustrators. Then we brainstormed story lines that depicted life in Palestine. The definition of their task was essential, being able to imagine a provocative story that was based on personal experience. As you will see, some students such as Ahmed Masri and Nisreen Qawwas, chose to explicitly draw their personal experiences while others used their own experience to draw a fictional graphic story. Using this Palestinian youth perspective, their collection of work will guide you through the daily struggles of life in the West Bank.

Once the final inking is complete we will start putting together a massive exhibtion at An-Najah University with hopefully local and international media. Give us your bets wishes for a successfull event. At that time, we hope to start working with a local printer and chain of bookstores to get it published and registered with the Ministry of Education under the Palestinian Authority.

Student Interviews

The final days of the course at An-Najah were filled with individual student interviews - all twelve of them! At first it was frustrating to get the information we needed about their personal lives and inspiration for their stories. Culturally, they are not accustomed to speaking openly about these things or any difficult experiences they incure with the occupation. In the West Bank, you will never see a sign for a therapy centre or psychologist, only tight nit communties that rely on eachother for support. However, after explaining the purpose of the interview and how their biography will be featured after their story in the book, dialogue was flowing. I was shocked to hear some of the personal accounts, especially my student from Qalqilya, a small town on the edge of the West Bank that is fully encircled by the Occupation Wall. Her life is filled with termoil but yet she makes it to school with a smile on her face, knowing that this is the best way to liberate her people, through hard work and determination. Despite the internal Hamas-Fatah fighting and gate closures, she made it to most classes and completed the project. Her story is about the emotions of being subjected to a divided society and effects of fighting, instabiity and war. It truly is moving. The book will feature information about each of their issues and also a personal account of living in the West Bank.

Here are just a few examples of their work.

Landed

I've finally arrived in Nablus and am delighted to get going with the project. As Rebecca's wonderful posts show, she has been working with art students from An-Najah University in creating 5 page comics based on their experiences. I've had the chance to see some of thier work and it is trully fantastic stuff. The comic creation concludes tommorow, but Rebecca will be continuing work on the project. organizing exhibitions and printing a book of the students work to be distrubited freely around Nablus. We'll publish a similiar book back home, which will then be sold to help provide a scholarship for students at An-Najah who wish to continue their studies abroad.

As for myself, up till now its been organized chaos in planning for the various projects. My classes proper start on Sunday, which I am trully excited for. This will consist of an English class using comics as a teaching resource, a comics based class which will focus more on small activities that let the students create stories, and hopefully a class with another volunteer combining techniques of photgraphy and comics, getting them to create stories using sequential photos. All of them should be great, and I'll keep you posted.

Once again, the fundraising website is http://www.givemeaning.com/project/nablusnovels We'll provide a permalink on the right hand side shortly, but if you have anything to give - be it 20, 50 or 200 dollars - it'd be hugely appreciated, as the program and publication costs are too much for two students to bear alone.

Raw Talent and Restrictions

I have to stop for a moment in this blog and say how privileged it feels to work with such talented students in Palestine, hearing their personal experiences and learning about their lives. Most of the students reside in villages surrounding Nablus and some come as far as an hour away, by the time they make it through multiple checkpoints. Not only are their materials in limited supply but the stress of occupation and random internal conflicts weighs on their ability to complete projects, not to mention the unlikely-hood of having a job upon completion or even for their work to viewed outside the West Bank. In the Middle East there is a huge market for arabesque art and mosaic tiling, and Nablus is known for one of the most famous tile makers, with his tradition style and techniques. Yet with all this raw talent and wealth of inspiration and drive, they are relegated to low paying jobs if their lucky to even land one in the first place. Many of these students are accepted into foreign universities for masters programs and even some are lucky enough to get scholarships. What's holding them back? A Visa - it's disgusting how these youths are essentially encouraged to ship in but not allowed to come out and prosper, bringing back even more skill and economic networks into their communities. Hmmmm, and where does the frustration come from again? It has nothing to do with work ethic, Arab culture or religious beliefs. Nablus is a peacefull city that should be recognized for its capabilities. The Hamas/Fatah/PFLP internal conflict is a great excuse for Israel to keep a tight lid on the Palestinian restrictions of movement and prosperity.

Finalizing with narration and begin using ink

After a weekend planning for the final stage of the project, I head off in the glaring sun to return to An-Najah University, excited to see the students final products in the pencil stage before ink is applied. At this point, they have grasped the concepts and are on a roll. It’s easier to communicate ideas and brainstorm text and narration. My student Nasreen from Qalqilya was inspired to draw about the incursion between Hamas and Fatah the previous week and express her family’s own fear while gunshots were heard in the streets outside her home. Before the last week had ended, there was another gunfight in Qalqilya, shutting her into the town for another two days. I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to complete her story and would be deprived of the chance to express her frustrations and experience to the world. I arrived to the class and not only was she in attendance, but also had all five pages completed. I thanked her for making such a valiant effort and not allowing the internal conflict to set her back. We began the final stage with reviewing changes and introducing ink techniques using Indian ink and ink pens liners.

Stage 3: Rough draft of all 5 pages

The third stage was completed as the students were taken through different activities throughout the remainder of the week to exemplify sequential art techniques including Motion-to-Motion, difference between time and space, using narrative and text and their difference, as well as techniques of drawing emotion. After completing this third stage, the rough pencil draft of the 5-pages, we will begin the fourth stage of perfecting the panels and adding necessary text and narration that helps support the story and a continuous flow. I was surprised to see the ease in which they adapted to the project and the activities. They had never studied such material but with their level of understand after such a short period of time, I could have sworn they were subjected to graphic novels since childhood. Upon completion, the students want to watch the movie Persepolis and celebrate the completion of such an intense program. Finally, they have become comfortable with asking question and speaking their mind, even the odd joke about my broken Arabic. Instead of quiet drawing with the famous singer Farouse playing in the background, I hear the odd “Miss Rebecca” across the classroom and it truly makes me smile. The last day of the week was interrupted by a news cast heard from the mosques concerning another death in Qalqilya, the class stopped to listen, the music was turned off and I couldn’t help but examine their reactions. I saw fear for the coming summer months, when there are masses of youth, with no jobs under frustrating conditions of economic deprivation and occupation

Day 5: Students Movement Restricted

Today was a grim day as there was a shooting between Hamas and Fatah in Qalqilya, leaving one of my students locked into the town. Qalqilya is an ancient roman town being strangulated by the wall which circulates the city cutting off all outside access with nothing but an entry/exit gate, monitored by the IDF. Situated about 12 kilometers east of the Mediterranean sea between Israel and the West Bank, has a total population of 45,000 inhabitants, all Palestinian from various political factions. Thousands of landless Palestinian refugees took refuge in the city during the 1948 Palestinian exodus in the lead up to and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, making one city quarter their home. I heard the news of the shooting in the morning, leaving members of both groups dead and as I questioned my fellow students as to the whereabouts of Nasreen, they told me she was from Qalqilya and lived next to the place where the incursion took place. My heart dropped hoping she was ok and frustrated at the barriers that stand in front of such talent. Internal conflict is one of the results of the occupation, affecting the lives of both Arabs and Israeli's.

Stage 2 - Day 4: Story Boarding

In Palestine the week begins on Sunday, so the students had a three day weekend as most of them had just finished their exams for the year and needed a break. The students participating in this intensive course get one credit and a certificate of completion. They are using their two week school break and lapsing over into summer studies. As anyone can imagine, they are very excited to have the novels published and exhibited in Nablus. Hopefully any profit from Canadian distribution can lead to a scholarship or two for the most talented students. The next stage was to begin drawing the first page of their story. Their task over the weekend was to finalize the story that they want the world to read and finish a rough story board. They began with setting out the A4 page with boxes and placement of their panels. A local volunteer and I would go student to student, hearing their ideas and helping them perfect technique and style.

Completing Stage 1 - Graphic Novel Intro and Character Boards Done

Began with the introduction of the project, a 5-page graphic story and brainstorming main characters. At first this concept was difficult because they had never been made to build an imaginatory figure but after some suggestions and a few worksheets that asked questions about the character, they began to draw using manga and standard comic art styles. Ensaf, a very talented young woman, used her style of mixing human figures with animal faces and drew a little lion boy character to star in a story about a Palestinian orphanage. It was impressive to see the students adapt with such ease to the task at hand even when they had never seen the type of art. By the third day we had a rhythm with beginning the class with announcement about the coming week, the stage of the project they should be at and the activities for the day. The week was short and ended with character boards finished and their stories formulates. The first stage was completed successfully and most of their stories are about the occupation and recent experiences of incursion and checkpoint experiences. One student, a very calm young male is drawing about an experience where he was shot at the checkpoint and still doesn’t understand why. He is most excited to create his own style of illustrating, continuously picking my brain on software and techniques. The students were gracious they had the chance to experience the workshop and were even more grateful when I told them they could take the graphic novels brought from Canada for the weekend. The next stage began, learning the process of story-boarding and to complete this by Sunday’s class. Story boards are basically like character boards where there is some rough images and notes about each panel necessary to coherently illustrate their stories.

Day 1 (University Students)

Day 1 – Thirteen students arrived and most of them had never seen graphic novels or even heard of sequential art. Two students were familiar with the genre and had been drawing for years since they were little. All from the Faculty of Arts, their disciplines were varying from paint to graphic design, to mosaic sculpting – so their drawing skills were less than first expected. This day was dedicated to introducing a variety of I had brought to Nablus and a few video clips of how to draw a character board. They were amazed to see stories about the occupation such as Joe Sacco's "Palestine" - it gave them hope. We ended the first class by playing an art game that exemplified the building of graphic novels. The students were made to sit in groups of six and seven, and given a sheet with seven boxes drawn out. They had five minutes to draw a picture then pass it to their left for the next sequential panel to be drawn. By the end of the game the last person had to title the comic strip and tell us what it was about. There were a lot of shy giggles and whispering but it was obvious they had fun and I could see their level of drawing, which was amazing. The stories were very detailed for such limited time and I felt it was a great start to the project. The Head of the Department, Dr. Kamal Zeidan brought cookies and tea, and we called it a day! Before leaving the room, I got two keen students to help move the desks into a semi circle for a more intimate setting.

An-Najah University

After meeting with the Dean and Head of Fine Art Faculty, we're set to begin the intensive graphic novel project with a group of art students. An-Najah University is divided into two campuses, the old and the new. The old is located closer to the centre of the city and houses mostly Humanities, Economics and Social Sciences. The new campus is Nablus’s proudest project as it sits on the top of a mountain, regal and pristine with the new library being constructed. This campus houses their Law, Engineering, Art and Health programs. As you walk through the security gates, your first glimpse is the rich landscape of west of Nablus including rolling hills, clear blue sky and gleaming white tile stairs leading you down to lower levels of the university. There are amazing, well educate professors but because of the restrictions of movement and access to goods is limited, the resources are poor. Even for the Faculty of Arts, the students that can afford supplies can’t even buy some of the necessary supplies for this project. Once the course began, I took the following weekend to make a trip to Jerusalem to pick up necessary supplies for my students at An-Najah, which takes 2 hours through checkpoints when in the year 2000 it could take 45 minutes. s a very structured program where students choose their discipline the first semester and then work nine months out of the year (12 when you include summer semester) to complete a five year program. This course is arranged to give them an extra credit on their transcripts and two exhibitions in Nablus as well as publishing both in Palestine and Canada.

A Taste of Things to Come

Far more comics will be posted, along with explanations of them, but for now please enjoy this excellent one page comic by the talented Holly Meyer-Dymny depicting Rebecca's arrival in Nablus.

Grass Roots in Palestine

To friends, family, donors, students, teachers, and random Internet surfers, Welcome. Graphic Novels of Nablus is a project that Michael and Rebecca are organizing this summer in coordination with Project HOPE, a grassroots NGO in the West Bank of Palestine. In this course we seek to create awareness through the stories depicted by university students at An-Najah in Nablus and help refugee kids use graphic novels as a learning tool for English and Art, but also (and more importantly) as way of creatively processing their own experiences. The art, stories, and comics the students create will later be published in the West Bank and Canada, distributed for fundraising purposes. A more detailed and far more erudite description of our aim/manifesto written by Rebecca can be found at our Give Meaning website, which is the central forum for our fundraising initiatives. This blog will feature our thoughts on using comics as teaching tool, reflections on the media itself, our experiences of teaching, feelings about the conditions of the children living in and anything else that relates to the project of GNN (Graphic Novels of Nablus). The link to Rebecca’s personal blog is http://rebecca-summer2009.blogspot.com/, fel free to read.

FUNDRAISING: Give Meaning, as already mentioned, is a website devoted to the fundraising of our program. Project HOPE is a well operated NGO with major impact in the community, but not one with huge amounts of resources. The distribution of the students work is only one of the many fundraising initiatives we have, and the Give Meaning website provides a very useful hub for people to donate. If you support our project, and have anything you can feel you could give, we'd appreciate it enormously. We also have a facebook group, hopefully we'll get more people to join, and it will serve as a communication hub for when we've got something really special to share.

UPDATE: The link for the wonderful journal Yalla, which will be publishing selections of the children’s work along with a variety of articles, stories, poetry and essays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Cultural Comparison's and Lesson Planning

Flying to Tel-Aviv today, the finalizing of class schedules for the next 7 weeks for our students will begin tomorrow as well as lesson planning to cover all stages of the program. Our first stage is to begin introducing graphic novel literature and the requirements for the final project, which are very flexible. Beyond the final graphic stories, our main initiative is to build relationships with the kids and university students. The processes of war and civil conflict can deeply disrupt the flow of cultural capital, threatening the historical continuation of their works of art. As a Canadian, I can compare this to the cultural materials of our aboriginal people. Without recent efforts to promote their works, there is a direct threat to the survival of the community's culture and a loss of such a rich and valuable wealth of knowledge and history. Help us continue these efforts witht the peacefull Palestinian community of Nablus. Donate to: http://www.givemeaning.com/project/nablusnovels

Nablus in 5 days

In just five days the 'Graphic Novels of Nablus' program, developed by Micheal Carens-Nedelsky and I will begin with two groups of children and adults. This program is multi-dimensional in its ability to teach a new genre of literature, artistic expression and an inventive way to assist teaching English as a second language. Currently busy lesson planning, I will arrive May 12th, while Micheal will begin his journey to join Project Hope early June. Upon completion of this project after building valuable relationships with the kids, we hope to publish a resource of graphic stories that tell the tale of resilience from a child's perspective. The course focuses on artistic technique, development of story boards and translation of vision to paper.