Located in Deir El Balah City, a central point in Gaza Strip, Nawa Association was founded in 2014 by a group of young, passionate and educated Palestinians to help empower their local communities through culture and arts programs. The general objective is to create a nurturing cultural hub for Palestinian families. Thousands of Palestinian children who have limited access to culture could benefit from artistic and psychosocial programs, in the values respect of friendly environment, freedom of speech, engagement and belonging, development and self-learning. Against the background of violence and instability, children are more vulnerable but also more likely to develop a resilient attitude thanks to an appropriate support. The choice of developping artistic expression and cultural openness is an ambitious gamble on future for the the country’s future generations. The association has already offered several services :
- Al Hikayat Nursery: Established in 2011 in Deir El Balah City, the nursery provides early-childhood educational services to families in the city and its surrounding areas. The nursery is a service provider utilizing its profits for the development and support of children libraries in the area.
- Sheikh of Birds Program (Sheikh Al Asafeer): the program aims at collecting past cultural stories from the elderly, documenting them, and performing them for children. The program also plans to produce cultural shows and exhibitions to revive collected stories of the past.
- Nawa Association’s library : it provides access to a library to encourage children to read, become critical thinkers, and develop self-learning skills. The library hope to have a variety of resources to help cater to different interests among children. It also reinforces the important role parents play in their children’s learning and especially nurturing a love of reading practice.
- Fine Arts Program : it wascreated to help children and their families appreciate and understand the significance of fine arts in individuals and communities development. The program helps discover children’s talents, improve their artistic skills, and enhance their arts knowledge.
- Family Empowerment Program : it was designed to support and encourage parents to take an active role in their children’s learning and development. The program encourages and integrates parents’ participation through activities planning and establishing a parents’ club.
- Psychosocial Intervention : Since Gaza strip suffers from a continuous attacks by the israelis, the traumatized children needs to be involved in a psychosocial support programs to help them to resolve their stress and trauma. This intervention program is useful in preventing future mental health problems in traumatized children.
- Educators’ Professional Development Program : plans to introduce professional development training to educators of children. The training will support educators by improving their planning and delivery skills of cultural and social activities and programs including story-telling, reading, drama, and puppet-show making.
- Ideas Bank : Nawa encourages members of the local community to share their creative ideas for cultural and social projects that feed into the development of children and families. Individuals can propose ideas that contribute to improving education, culture, and self-learning. Nawa stresses the critical value of volunteerism and aspires to promote it as a community-wide value.