Trajectories

Stories Unfold: Narratives Of Youth From Education To Employment

A research project on display.

Born from the academic research by the Center for Lebanese Studies, this exhibition asks, In displacement settings, what shapes the life trajectories of young people from education to employment?

We invited a group of young Jordanians, Palestinian And Syrian Refugees living in Amman to draw their River of Life.  This analytical participatory approach produced meaningful drawings representing their trajectories from birth onto the future and reflected the legal, social, gender, cultural, and economic realities.

Ala'a, Female 27
Abdelrahman, Male 28
Ahmad, Male 20
Yara, Female 24
Jaber, Male 23
Alia, Female 20
Mahmoud, Male 22
Haya, Female 18
Bassel, Male 25
Ali, Male 22
Bisher, Male 19
Aysha, Female 27
Mohamman, Male 22
Rashad, Male 22
Yousra, Female 29

Curator: Dana Barqawi 

We wanted through these works of arts to enable young people to develop their voice for advocacy through action research, community training, and art exhibitions as an expression of their needs and aspirations about education and employment.

Acknowledgments

The research project “From Education to Employment: Youth Trajectories in Jordan and Lebanon in the Context of Protracted Displacement” was made possible by funding from International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and The Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University (UK). Open Society Foundation funded creative production. Luminous supported the audio-visual tools for participatory analysis. This research is led by the Centre for Lebanese Studies at the Lebanese American University in Lebanon and Jordan. Research in Jordan was conducted at Liwan Youth Space. We are the most thankful for the young people we worked with and their willingness to open their hearts and minds.