“Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder.”

– Eberhard Arnold

“TELL ME…”  is a project in which Palestinian children, aged 7 to 14 years old spent 10 weeks creating a collaborative book focusing on their lives and selves.

Tell Me book features photographs, which the children took, and stories that they wrote.

Program Description: 

Tell Me team and community center volunteers ran workshops as an after school activity for 2.5 hours, one afternoon per week. Workshops included camera-technique training, creative writing exercises, and transferring of ideas and imagination onto paper and through the lens.Tell Me provided participants with cameras to use outside of the classroom, to take photos of what each child viewed as important to her/him. As homework, the participant had to think through and write about each photo, explaining the motivation for that image. In addition to learning techniques and skills, students played games and participated in group activities.

For Tell Me students the act of writing was not just a form of communication but also a means to make sense of experiences and gain a deeper understanding of the self. The combination of the creativity of the process with the achievement of something tangible increased feelings of self-confidence and self-value. Thus creative writing has been recognized as a form of therapy for the students.

Objectives of the project:  

To cultivate greater literacy and creativity for children.

To teach the craft of creative work according to a course schedule with regular deadlines for in class and at home work.

To encourage independent creative work and confidence in one’s self, one’s ideas, and one’s ability to communicate those ideas.

To nurture and nourish children’s imagination through guided freedom, which offers the space through supportive mentoring for participants to explore themselves.

To target rural communities who are less likely to access the resources and infrastructure necessary to participate in extra curricular and creative programs.

The project aims at enabling the children to recognize and articulate through creative works their sense of identity and to understand where they fit into their peer groups, their families, and their communities.

Tell Me team

Paula Jones (New Zealander), Director:

Oversees the running of the project – find and liaise with international participants, procure funds.

Nidal Shalodi – (Palestinian), Co-Ordinator.

Runs the workshops, creates the schedules, and is the point of contact for the centres management and the workers.

Tamara Azizian (New Zealander), Co-Ordinator.

Runs the workshops, creates the writing exercises and schedules.

Ahed Izihiman – (Palestinian), Photographer.
Runs workshops with the children, selects and edits the photos for the book.
PS: All the photos here are taken by the children