Preparing for the student visit from Palestine

Pendle-Beit Leed is going to be working with CADFA on an exciting student visit from Palestine. The project summary is below and the visit will be in June! Two young women from Beit Leed, Saja and Asala will be among the group. There will be many visits to places and organisations in Pendle during the first part of the visit... watch this space!

The project summary: 'Ma'an: students together' organised by CADFA, funded by Youth in Action

(logo from a previous student visit)

Twelve students from Al Quds and An Najah Universities in Palestine together with two leaders will spend twelve days with twelve students from universities in Britain during June 2013. They will compare their experiences and their lives as students and design material together to make a website that will strengthen on-going twinning links between their student unions and seek to extend this work to other universities.

Before the exchange, the students in each country will use the book of photos made during our last students' exchange ‘Look at our Lives’ as a stimulus to discussion about student twinning links and what they want to do in the project. They will prepare for the exchange by taking photographs and videos and preparing short presentations on their lives and concerns.  This will become material to show the other group during the visit.

The first three days of the visit will be a residential in Lancashire when the students from each country will present their lives to the other group. Together they will meet people from a local twinning group (Pendle) and a different university (Manchester) which will help them decide on themes and content for a student twinning website which they will prepare during the following week. 

The group will travel to London where the British students will show the Palestinians their life in the city and they will work in small groups to make material for the website. They will have workshops in which they can create animated film based on the experiences of the week and designs for the website. The evenings will have a variety of activities with university students from across London.  

The participants will show their work in a public event at SOAS to which a European representative will be invited. The day will include an evaluation of the website, a discussion on ways this can be used to strengthen student twinning links, planning for dissemination of the work and for future work together. Following the visit, the website will be publicised to student groups in both countries and CADFA and student unions will continue to work to develop the student twinning links.