Atzpodienstrasse 3
10365 Berlin
Germany
- Arts
- Democracy and community development
- Environment/Sustainable development
- Gender
- Human rights
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- International/Cultural relations
- Youth and education
WASLA is a non-profit organization based in Berlin, Germany, seeking to promote dialogue and peace via cooperation between Arab and German civil society organizations; established by Arab-German youth initiatives, NGOs, workers and activists who are working in the field of youth empowerment and sustainable development. Through our activities we promote gender equality, women's rights, empowerment and security. At the level of the organization we are encouraging women to get actively involved in local, national and international activities. For all trainings, we take into account to ensure gender balance of participants. We have run workshops and roundtables focused on empowering women to enhance women and girls leadership and participation. We organize weekly sessions for women, led by Nora Amin She is also the coordinator of a non-formal activity that encourages women's creativity, supports team spirit and life skills. In terms of women's depression, the MENA region is ranked higher than any other region in the world. Depression is the leading cause of illness for women in MENA. Another problem that these women face is early marriage. Parents have the power to decide who they marry to and inform them about the arrangements without considering their opinion. We have a group of women volunteers who come from the MENA regions. This is why is very important for us to organize activities that can increase physical confidence, improve general and psychological wellbeing, boost women's self-confidence and self-esteem and develop social skills. Number of paid staff 5; unpaid staff 9; learners 5; members 55; volunteers +40 Our organization organized Berlin Days for Arabian Culture in Alexander Platz for 3 days, in April 2019. The event was organized in partnership with local organizations, German stakeholders and Arab communities in Germany. There were music concerts, music workshops, book fair, handicrafts workshops, traditional dances, poetry sessions, movies presentations, children art activities and round table. The diversity of the activities aimed to address to a wide audience and to reunite people of different ages. The competencies of our permanent members helped in running the activities in such a way that the communication between generations was encouraged. Some of the issues on which we focused were related to Arab women, social justice and women rights. Targeting parents we presented the suffering of Arab women; the first movie is about early marriage in Yemen "I'm Najoud 10 years old and divorced". Furthermore, people were encouraged to share their personal experience related to the topic. We launched a campaign to raise awareness of parents about the negative aspects of early marriages. We used the storytelling technique to encourage our audience, especially older people, to share their life stories which contributed to develop empathy and a closer connection among people. The Festival's program included several activities translated into Arabic, German and English languages. Participants and audience were people of both genders aged between 6 and 65 We organized Erasmus+ projects getting fund from the EU Commission, we had bilateral projects with German-Turkish youth bridge and a series of local activities (Berlin Integration Club; Dance and Music workshop; Cinema workshops).
Our philosophy encourages the achievement of a balanced flow of cultural goods and services, increasing the international exchanges, integrating culture into sustainable development, promoting freedom and human rights. We strongly consider that supporting cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue will open up new perspecties for sustainable growth and innovation. The key factors that act as the internal motor for sustainable development are creativity and culture. Bringing together people with different educational and cultural backgrounds, encouraging them to communicate and share visions will increase understanding different points of view and practices, strengthening active citizenship, peace and the feeling of belonging to the same community. Objectives: 1. Foster international understanding, non-formal education and youth empowerment. 2. Promote dialogue between cultures. 3. Faceing racism within societies. 4. Spread the culture of tolerance and acceptance others. Fields of work: -Non-formal education -Dialogue between cultures -Arts -Culture and Heritage -Youth Empowerment -Independent media/ Social media -Civil participation, Democracy, Gender Equality and Human Rights -Culture of Peace WASLA is the head of the German National Network of the Euro-Med Youth Federation, each National Network is coordinated by focal point institution called Head of Network that works to: 1. Facilitate consultation and mobilization inside the National Network 2. Contribute to the development and implementation of Common Actions among member organizations and across Networks 3. Involve its members in the Federation’s programs and projects 4. Ensure coordination 5. Strengthen the cooperation between the Heads of Network and the EMYF secretariat The German National Network offers a wide range of benefits, from broadening knowledge, to be inspired from others experience, to attain new achievements and to share success with others. Also, WASLA is a member of other several networks as following: • Network of Arab Societies in Europe (NAS) Arab Diaspora Young People in Europe (ADYPE)
REFUGEES WELCOME: A PLATFORM FOR SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION, project number 2018-3-PT02-KA205-005513 gathers basic and preliminar information about the situation of refugees within the partner countries. It facilitates access to information (online and offline), up-to-date and reliable contacts of the services and advantages available to refugees in the following areas: education, health, housing, employment, leisure and others. Within this project we organized orientative sessions and workshops to offer information about renting houses, enrolling children in schools, finding jobs, legal advices and integration. - Activities in partnership with Jerusalem Cultural Forum: Reading Club. The aim of this club is to promote culture and literature. People came together to read books, exchange opinions on several topics and share their views on different topics. This initiative promotes social inclusion and encourages cross cultural communication. The club is open to any person who likes reading and the members are aged between 15 and 65 years old. - Activities coordinated by our trainers. Art and Crafts Club - reunites women and children to work together, creating handmade products (i.e. Christmas cards, jewellery, souvenirs). We strongly encourage and offer the necessary support to our members and volunteers in implementing their project ideas. The idea of this club was started by Mostafa Abbas who suggested to ask to our young volunteers to invite their grandparents to our center and create handmade products by working together. It helped in decreasing the gap generation and in developing social empathy. - Cinema workshops run by Fares Mohamed, former director at the Public Cinema Center in Damascus, Syria; - Dance and Music workshop runs by former musician Abeer Ali and former dancer and director Nora Amin, of the Ministry of Culture in Egypt. "Infiltration" A dance performance “The body is touched, the body is being looked at, the body is insulted [...] it is an infiltration of the self.” (Weiblichkeit im Aufbruch, Nora Amin, MSB Matthes&Seitz) Farina and Nora are creating a duo dealing with the diverse aspects of infiltration. Both artists are interested in the themes of personal space, autonomy, freedom, intimacy and the potential revolt against abusive practices and authoritarian powers. INfiltration examines what it means for each of us to be transgressed, infiltrated, and dislocated from one’s own ownership of oneself. The spectators form an active part of the experience, they are scattered in the performance space, witnessing, participating by their energies, and moving around and among the two dancers. - Berlin Integration Club: Persons who wish to teach German language in Germany – or who wish to teach Arabic language to German speakers in Berlin – can choose to specialize in teaching the language to non native speakers. - In the framework of the CIN Innovation Days, we launched a music album – Music for Peace - created by underground musical bands, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office as one of the programmes of Goethe Institute. For more information please check www.culturalinnovators.org SinCRoMinD project 2019-1-EL01-KA204-062518, The target group of this project, people 55+, increase in all European countries. Due to this project citizens from different countries, cultures and traditions through cultural activities (dances, arts, theatre, photography, cooking, etc), ICT and foreign languages intend to develop intercultural consciousness, limit the prejudices and highlight the commons. This is of high relevance, because the engagement with Arts, ICT, Language and Culture is for many elder people the opening for new opportunities in participation and higher quality of life. Fostering Youth Initiatives through Social Enterprise Education project 2019-1-UK01-KA205-061356, The main objective of the project is to equip youth workers from the participating organisations with the tools and knowledge to be able to train other youth workers and support young people in the development of new and innovative social entrepreneurial activities. WASLA hosted KA105 training course 2018-2-DE04-KA105-016811 CONFLICT: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR LEARNING!. Also, WASLA participated in different KA105 training courses as co-benficary such as Innovators' coaching training course 2018-1-IT03-KA105-013361 in Rome, training course 2019-2-FR02-KA105-016285 Creativators! In Paris. Moreover, WASLA organized non-formal education activities in the framework of other youth programmes, such as the German-Turkish youth bridge; the project "Korfball for Social inclusion" AA-0018-III.8_1. - CONFLICT: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR LEARNING! In various parts of Europe and neighbouring countries young people face challenges related to globalisation, multicultural societies, social exclusion and transition to adulthood. These challenges often result in tension, misunderstanding, conflict and even violence. At the same time, many live in regions or communities going through or recovering from conflict. In youth work conflict is an inevitable topic, both as a transversal theme and as a specific area of work. Youth workers have to adapt to changing realities, issues and concerns faced by young people. What kind of activities should we offer in volatile communities? What are the basic principles of non-formal learning in such contexts? https://www.facebook.com/waslacenter/videos/364395510814629/ https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-project-details/#project/2018-2-DE04-KA105-016811 - Innovators' coaching project The project helped participants to reflect on issues which are common to all countries coming from the EU and Mediterranean regions and in particular it focused on the issues of inclusion and give tools to the participants to increase the level of participation of young people through a more inclusive approach in their work. Innovators' coaching used hands on approach and non-formal methods of education to assist the participants to understand the different types of inclusion and methods of how to deal with them. This helped the participants to understand what the role of a coach within the area of inclusion should be and give them tools to work with when working with young people. https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-project-details/#project/2018-1-IT03-KA105-013361 - Regarding our activity in dialouge between cultures field, The project "Civilization Ambassadors Winter Camp", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq5EPbVU8gI - Mobile App: In the near future we are going to develop a mobile application targeting high schools. The central idea is to offer to the teenagers hands on experience on how news are produced. To be more precise, this application will connect media, schools and students. Students, are the main target group, they will be given the possibility to make the difference between real and fake news as due to the social media they are exposed to a wide pool of information. Teenagers represent a vulnerable group easy to be manipulated via social media, this is why we consider necessary to make them aware of power of media. We are also going to organize workshops to encourage discussions between reporters and high school students.
Our organisation can help to promote the values and aims of Anna Lindh Foundation, increase the number of people involved in local activities, promote intercultural and civil society dialogue in the Euro-Mediterannea Area and to share our practical knowledge related to promoting social empathy and social inclusion.
We are interested to join the ALF Network to expand our network of contacts, to organize local and international activities , to better integrate intercultural resource centre for civil society, education institutions in our activities, to learn from experts how to empower young people for acting as active citizens and get actively involved in the life of their communities.