Relations between family situations, social work and schools to foster children’s resilience towards violence
Swiss partners
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IHEID: Alexander Dormeier Freire (main applicant), Hanan Salama
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HES-SO, Haute école de travail social, Geneva: Sylvia Garcia Delahaye, Anne-Françoise Wittgenstein Mani
Partners in the MENA region
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An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine: Samah Saleh (main applicant)
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Palestinian syndicate of social and psychological workers; UNWRA: Iyad Salim
Presentation of the projet
We must mention from the outset that the entire project had to rethought because of the COVID; the project was particularly affected by the restrictions on entry into Israeli territory but also by the sanitary situation in the Palestinian territories. It prevented us from implementing the project according to the modalities that had been defined. As a result, in 2019, we were only able to conduct two focus groups with Tulkarem institutions and associations active in the field of violence mitigation, in particular violence against children and women. The two focus groups were organised by our partner the Palestinian Syndicate for Psychologist and Social Worker. From 2020 onwards, as the Swiss researchers of the team couldn’t travel to Palestine, we have decided, after consultation with our Palestinian partners, and in agreement with the Leading House, to strengthen the local team and give it a more important role. The team of Swiss researchers participated to the decentralized modalities of the project at a distance, contributed to the training of two Palestinian researchers (Ms. Israa Hussein, and Ms. Rula Qubbaj from Tulkarem) who reinforced our team; our local partners organized the art-based methods workshops, made the link with the communities, ensured the transcriptions, followed up with the artists for the good progress of the project activities. While, in general, the project was able to proceed according to its stated objectives, and significant results were achieved, due to the COVID crisis and the overflow of health services in Palestine, contact with the non-academic partner (the union of social and psychological workers) was more difficult to maintain. We would also like to thank the Leading House for its flexibility and understanding, as well as our Palestinian partners for their adaptability and the fantastic work they did. We are also grateful to Alaa Abu Saa for letting us use the premises of the Dar Qandeel Cultural Centre in Tulkarem to organise the three workshops.
The main activities carried out by the project:
- Conduct two focus groups: See the list of participating institutions and associations in annex 1.
- Remote preparation of the data collection modalities: Redefinition with our partners of the data collection process in the COVID context
- Recruitment and training of research assistants: After the decision to change the modalities of our project was taken, we decided to hire two research assistants with knowledge of the Tulkarem context to support the An-Najah team. We also started the identification of artists for the workshops.
- Coordination with artists, preparation of workshop protocol: We conducted several distant meetings with the artists (Ms. Aliaa Alrosan; Mr. Ramzi and Mr. Raed; Ms. Wiam Al Ali and Mr. Alaa Abu Saa) to define and design the artbased workshops objectives and protocols according with the research questions. We also decided to hire a photographer/cinematographer (Mr. Waseem Khair) to record the workshops to have a complete transcript of the events (for the Swiss remote team) and to have audio & video materials useful for the next step of the project (design of the App).
- Conduct of the art-based workshops (participatory methods): Three art-based workshops were conducted with three different arts and audience in late January and February 2022: (a)Puppets (Raed and Ramzi), 30 kids aged between 6 and 12 randomly selected by our local team participated; (b) Colour cloth (Alia Alrosan), 8 women randomly selected by our local team participated; (c) Environment and art-expression (Alaa and Wiam), 15 female adolescents aged of 12-17 years randomly selected by our local team participated.