Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Recapping Our Visit to Zaatari

Laurie and Jean volunteered at Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan during their spring visit in 2015. While Jean taught young adults Laurie shared arts and crafts with the children. The visit was facilitated by IRD and sponsored by Jean and Laurie's own fundraising efforts through Studio Syria. Money donated by friends and family paid for art supplies. 




Life in Zaatari has become more orderly in the past two years but it still a grim home for 85,000 people. Many still live in tents and electricity was not available while we were there. 


One of our art students graciously invited us for lunch at his home.





Laurie loves to work with children and her crocheted bracelets were as popular as ever. 





At the end of the week Studio Syria handed out "fun packs" which contain paper, notebooks, activity booklets, colored pencils, sharpeners, pencils and markers.



While the children were busy with arts and crafts Jean taught young adults how to draw and tell their stories through making comics. 

 

















IRD employee Mays Abu Lail was an enthusiastic translator and friend during our drawing classes. 



The IRD library needs more children's books and Studio Syria donated some generously provided by Karen Asfour. Here we found one of our donations made a couple of years ago. It has been well used! 



 

Iyad Fanan stands outside the art trailer that Studio Syria helped to stock with art supplies. If you have donated to Studio Syria you have helped to make all this possible. If you would like to donate please visit our website at studiosyria.org All donations are spent on educational supplies. We take no overhead or any other expenses (except 7% for book keeping) so if you give a dollar we will spend 93 cents on pencils, paper, paints and other educational supplies. Thank you for supporting us.

To see the results of our comic book workshops at Zaatari please scroll down.