Tataouine (Tunisia), 21 August 2011 - This week, our program continued at the Les Alizes hotel in cooperation with the Tunisian Mezraya school. A course in handicrafts for women was also added for teaching the children—they learned how to make traditional embroidered scarves. On Monday this project officially ends, but already on Friday almost half of the families had left the hotel and returned home to Libya. The frontline has advanced significantly, and it is precisely at these moments that one talks about the very rapid development of the situation. Everywhere, tension and excitement are palpable. Libyan families that still remain in Tunisia are calling relatives in Tripoli more and more often, and journalists who had already been almost on their way home are changing their plans, and after a short rest in one of the border hotels, they are returning again to the battle areas to accompany the advancing revolutionary guards.
Even in places where fighting has already subsided, there are still many dangerous traps, especially for children. Unexploded ammunition is mainly a major temptation for boys, but playing with it often ends tragically. For this reason, MaG prepared an awareness program for Libyan children through which they should learn to respond correctly upon finding a dangerous object. A simple A4 coloring page is also part of the program, which, according to MaG’s assignment, was drawn by Hector - husband of our clown Mimi.
Within our cooperation with MaG, we printed 8,000 copies of this awareness coloring sheet and also bought 8,000 packs of small crayons. The material is intended for Libyan children in Tunisia, but it will also be distributed until the end of this year, together with humanitarian aid, directly in Libya. It will also reach children in Libyan schools.
The coloring page story is simple: Ali, the boy, is finally returning home to Libya with his family and looks forward to playing football with his friends. They welcome him, but show him a picture of different types of ammunition and point out that it is dangerous. Later Ali walks with the ball with his friends and on the way finds an unexploded bomb sticking out of the ground. He already knows he must not approach it and should tell his father about the find. The father calls a soldier, who marks the place with the bomb and shows the boy a safer place to play. Shortly afterward, Ali and his friends are happily kicking the ball and scoring a goal...
During the first distribution for Libyan children in Tataouine, we were able to test that the story is understandable, and even smaller children understood its essence. It was also a pleasant surprise that even older children faithfully colored the pictures, and some parents also joined in. Meanwhile, instructors told the story individually with the children. We also learned several alarming real-life stories that parents immediately added. Those parents highly valued the activity aimed at protecting their children. So the children would not go to sleep with an unpleasant vision of war scenes, and in the end they were cheered up by clown Mimi. The whole event indeed took place late in the evening.
We repeated a similar action in the Club for Women and Children in Tataouine, which is actually also a refugee camp. Families with children there are cared for mainly by Libyans from the diaspora, who founded a non-governmental organization for this purpose. Even though care here is exceptional, children still happily identify with Ali’s story. They look forward to an early return home and safe play with friends...
Daniel Dräxler, director of ADRA Slovensko, worked in the summer of 2011 in Tunisian Tataouine in an international team that provided aid to Libyan refugees. As a result of the crisis in Libya, almost three-quarters of a million people left the country according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration, approximately 300,000 of whom went to Tunisia. To help refugees in Tunisia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic allocated a grant of 15 000 euros to ADRA Slovensko from the SlovakAid program. The aid was focused on improving the lives of Libyan children in four refugee camps in Dehibe, Remade, and Tataouine. More in D. Dräxler’s blog on the website www.adra.sk.
Foto: Daniel Dräxler and the young refugees from Libya. Archive ADRA Slovensko, Daniel Dräxler
This article was published in the bulletin Rozvojová pomoc - Jeseň 2011. It is published by the Platforma mimovládnych rozvojových organizácií (MVRO), which is an association of legal entities - the umbrella organization of 31 (23 full members and 8 observers) Slovak non-governmental organizations that mainly deal with international development and humanitarian aid. http://www.mvro.sk
The full issue of the journal Rozvojová pomoc - jeseň 2011 in PDF