Hi there
I just wanted to tell you all that I have really enjoyed reading your diaries this week and I'm so glad that most of you have really managed to engage in discussion about what is currently going on in the Gaza strip, and that you discussed this with your peers and had the opportunity to experience what an important issue this is for so many people, and begin to understand how strongly they feel and why. Keep reflecting on this and also on how the media (look at as many different sources as possible) are presenting this issue, whose voices are being heard and whose are being ignored, what linguistic choices are being made by politicians and journalists as they talk about the issue, and also look for some hard facts, numbers.
As I said before, you now have only two weeks left, so use them well. In your discussions ask questions you perhaps haven't had the courage to ask yet, listen to different views and probe deeper to understand them, be active in the discussions as well as in your learning.
As usual, post your diaries as comments here, and also links to your videos so that the others in this group can see them. I suggest having a meeting on Friday 6th December at 12.30 to 'de-brief', that is exchange final reflections on the experience, discuss your videos and evaluations.
Please let me know if you will be able to come or not.
Francesca
I just wanted to tell you all that I have really enjoyed reading your diaries this week and I'm so glad that most of you have really managed to engage in discussion about what is currently going on in the Gaza strip, and that you discussed this with your peers and had the opportunity to experience what an important issue this is for so many people, and begin to understand how strongly they feel and why. Keep reflecting on this and also on how the media (look at as many different sources as possible) are presenting this issue, whose voices are being heard and whose are being ignored, what linguistic choices are being made by politicians and journalists as they talk about the issue, and also look for some hard facts, numbers.
As I said before, you now have only two weeks left, so use them well. In your discussions ask questions you perhaps haven't had the courage to ask yet, listen to different views and probe deeper to understand them, be active in the discussions as well as in your learning.
As usual, post your diaries as comments here, and also links to your videos so that the others in this group can see them. I suggest having a meeting on Friday 6th December at 12.30 to 'de-brief', that is exchange final reflections on the experience, discuss your videos and evaluations.
Please let me know if you will be able to come or not.
Francesca
i'll be able and really Glad to come to the "de-brief" meeting on friday 6th december.
RispondiEliminadon't really want to say too much about the talks i had during the past session, they were really though and i prefer to talk about it when we meet.
Clod
Good evening guys!
RispondiEliminaUnfortunately the Soliya project is going to finish in a week,. It's a pity because it is becoming - session after session - more interesting!
Today we were many in the main room and it seemed like a group of friend chatting in a bar! When I entered in the blog, I immediately received private messages and it was very kind!
In particular, the guy from Pakistan is very nice (he also added me on Facebook) and the American girl is a simple and funny person.
The German guy and I had to prepare some questions to start the discussion and we were free to choose whatever issue.
At last the facilitatores divided us in three groups to use the other breakout rooms! We had to ask direct questions about the topic that we wanted to talk, and then we had to formulate an enquiry for the whole group.
I was with an American boy who is studying in the Arabic Emirates and a girl who lives in Dubai. They are very good in English so it was a bit difficult sometimes to understand them. Moreover they live quite near. I mean, the project connects persons from all over the world and they live in the same nation so it’s amazing!
As I organized a part of the debate of today, I chose to speak about family. First of all I asked them to tell me about their family. Besides I passed three links in the chat box to introduce my real question! They showed three different photos of families, the first one showed a multiethnic family, the second one a gay family and the last a lesbian family. I’d like to know their idea about that and if they have a stereotype of family or not. I was glad to listen that we have the same idea! We think love is the most important thing and religion has influenced a lot the image of a specific kind of family. We can widely see this in Italy!
After the serious discussion, we started talk about ourselves and where we live. We went on saying what country we’d like to visit, so we thought that it might be interesting to listen to the opinion of the other mates.
In the middle of the session we came back to the main room. Each group told briefly to the others the issues discussed and said the question that it would like to ask.
We replied to all the enquiries in round. I appreciated the conversation because I discovered that many have the craving to travel around the Arabian region and especially to visit Iran. I’m surprised about that!
Finally the teachers suggested us to say what we learned from the video project, what we preferred to do and what we gained by doing the video. For me, it has been a bit difficult to use YouTube Editor however at the end it was like a game! Furthermore I listened to several ideas about the relationship between West and East and I knew new approaches.
That’s all for today, enjoy your session,
Bye bye,
Monica
P.S. : it's ok for me Friday 6!
It's ok for me as well meeting on Friday, but it's the 7th, not 6th!
RispondiEliminaGIada Zanella
Hi guys,let's talk now about this seventh session.
RispondiEliminaYesterday unfortunately everything was a mess because I arrived twenty minutes late and for all the session I had techincal issues that didn't allow me to speak and be heard.
We started asking each other what may be a possible solution for the war between Palestinians and Israelis.
The position of Miryame and Hossam from Morocco and Egypt was simple: a categorical refusal to accept the exsitence of the state of Israel! And the exigence to push back(but where?)the Israelis in order to reach the peace!
I didn't agree with them,and I tried to bring the debate in a more costructive field saying that the real problem it's another.
Israel didn't respect the resolution of the General Assembly of the UN of 1947 which expected two separeted states for both the People, starting its war against Palestinians and occupying the territories. This is the root of the nowadays situation and sadly the UN has showed themselves like paralyzed in front of it.
So I suggested that we have to keep in mind all these points before discussing a possible solution, avoiding to speak through simple catch phrases or propaganda.
Instead making efforts to find real solutions Miryame continued to make a sort of apology of this dramatic status quo stating that a coexistence between two People that have different values and religion is impossible.
I thought that it was easy for Miryame to make apologies of hate and violence because she doesn't live in Palestine where People are starving and are scared to be shot or bombed.
I told her that I have cousins who live in Palestine and Israel which are tired of this atmosphere of hate and insecurity, and they live in peace with the Israeli guys, they go to school or drinking beer together, so it's not true that the coexistence between arabs and jewishes is impossible.
The real issue is the nationalism of the Israel's establishment that have caught the minds of many Israelis, and the consequent lack of equality in their speeches about Palestinian condition.
I think that my words weren't considered seriously (especially when Miryame suddenly weared the hijab and started to make silly jokes about the end of the world and the consequent supremacy of Islam after it, as the only one religion that will be able to survive), but it doesn't matter, it was just important for me to give a message and an example of peace and peaceful behaviours.
At the end Sharon, our facilitator from the UK, asked us if we thought that the international law could have a role in the Middle East.
The answer from me and Hossam was positive, maybe because we study international relations :)
In 1974 the UN made the resolution 3314 about the aggression and they stated that also an occupation is an aggression and this is an illegal act.
The problem is that this resolution works between the states and Palestine is not still a state. Thos the "classic international law" can't do so much,but the international law of human rights may reach some good results.
The international community, the UN, can continue to spread and improve a culture of peace in order to create a global consciusness in the public opinion that may lead a lobbying action to push the Security Council and the General Assembly to recognise the state of Palestine.
As you could have understood, although very exciting, this session has been very upset and sometimes useless and boring due the harsh positions and words expressed.
The next week we are going to have our last session and I hope that we could re-establish a friendly atmosphere leaving the propaganda to the old politicians, we are the youth of the world and we must believe in peace and cosmopolitanism.
P.s. yes for me friday it's okay, see you!!!
RispondiEliminaNovember 27th, 2012
RispondiEliminaHi everyone!
Today I had the 7th meeting with my Soliya’s group; we are near to the end of this project =( today the atmosphere was rather happy and lively, almost the all of us were present and everybody was willing to talk and share his opinions and feelings. We embraced many topics, from the role the media plays in our societies, how we dealt with this issue while making our video project, the stereotypes and prejudices the media vehicles and so on. What I felt most surprising of all this was hearing the Tunisian and Egyptian guys of my group saying: before the revolution, it was normal to be arrested because you had said that might be thought as unconventional or revolutionary. Only one word more than the necessary ones was enough to be kept in prison for years- not to talk about what a person was obliged to do or submit to while he/she is there. I was amazed. It is something I have heard, I have read about it (in historical books, in true-story novels and so on), but it all seemed as something so far, far away. I would never have imagined to hear this from a guy of my age. To my reason, it is something that belongs to the Middle Age. I can not conceive that.
The second part of the session, instead, was about the biased question that can be asked. The influence the answer that is given. To have a practical example, and to make Chris’ desires come true, we talked about the Afghanistan and Iraq war. We had to ask question to each other, as if we were journalists. It helped: we found out that the item did not receive the same importance from the different media (in Tunisia they heard really little about it), and so the ideas on it were scarce. We discussed, but just briefly, the authority of giving help or support to other countries, whenever it is needed. Does this justify the presence of an army on a foreign soul? The all of us agreed that it does not, and that the US’ army presence in the Middle East did much bad than good. Ahmed /the guy from Egypt) went so far to say that every occupation is an act of terrorism, and so that the Americans acted (and are still acting) as terrorists. I do not agree with this statement: an occupation might be illegal and done with violence, but I wouldn’t define it as an act of terrorism without considering who is its author. I am not justifying the presence of a foreign army on a state’s soil; but I would not go so far as to say it is terrorism.
We left the session with all those open questions in our minds. I am still thinking about the freedom of speech which so many people did not have till a so short time ago, and the freedom so many people till nowadays do not have. I am amazed in hearing this. I tend to consider human rights given to everyone. I am too much idealistic, I should try to be more realistic- which is not a synonymous for pessimistic. That’ll be my duty till next week.
Cla
Hello!
RispondiEliminaUnfortunately todays' session did not start in the best way possible for me because I had several technical problems, in fact my web cam was not working and I manged to fix it only later.
However our meeting was really interesting, we started to talk about our experiences with the video project,for example if we liked this project or not, what was it like to do it and if we liked the sources we had to watch in order to create it. The majority of us agreed that it was a really interesting activity but 90 mins were not enough to summarize what happened in the world after September 11. We also talked about what we would like to do in a similar video project and we pointed out that it would be great to interview people in order to hear what people usually think about this topic and that it would be important to highlight questions that can have an important impact on those that are watching the video. We also tried to do multi-sided videos not focusing only on one point of view but instead showing both perspectives. It was great to see how similar we are and how similar is our way of thinking although distance and different cultural backgrounds.
In todays' meeting we also analized medias role in society in a more specific and accurate way, for example we tried to understand how it deceives public opinion.
However it was quite shocking to hear from a girl that lives in Egypt that she would never trust local media because the government completely controls it, as a consequence she needs to look for english sources that in this case can be seen as more reliable. However we all agreed that media can't be trusted in general. Both western and eastern sources have to be analyzed carefully and we have to compare an information with another. Obviously this topic directly related to the freedom of speech and it was really sad to hear that in the eastern world things are quite different, depending also on your social status. So at the end again we started to talk about really tricky topics. In addition I would like to say that many people was interested in knowing something about the Italian media including television and newspapers and I had to explain how it "works" here.
Towards the end of the meeting our facilitators asked us if there are any topics we would like to focus on next time and I truly believe that our next session will be particularly interesting and challenging because I am sure we will focus on everything that interests us more in order to use our last meeting in the best way possible.
Giada Zanella:
RispondiEliminaHi everyone!
Last Thursday i had my seventh (argh! Already seventh!) session at the Soliya program; here’s what happened:
First of all, I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t the best session ever, but not because of topics or discussions, but of technical problems. My microphone wasn’t working (though I had tested it before starting), then it was too loud, then we couldn’t listen to what Julie or Maher were saying… Anyway, I did my best to join the conversation and actively participate, though typing my opinion instead of telling it makes a huge difference on how it’s perceived.
First we discussed about our video project. Most of us share the same main difficulty, which was selecting among lots of video clips and how to put them in an order that conveyed our message (if there was one). In fact, I didn’t want to express my personal opinion through that video, rather, I wanted to give a wide range of different opinions, points of view and perceptions of what happened in the relationship between the West and the Middle East after 9/11. Instead, other members of my group tried to express how important dialogue must be, in order to destroy stereotypes and understand each other. Besides this, it was interesting to see how our videos focus on different aspects, for example, Michael’s focuses on conflict and extreme opinions, while Julie’s on conciliation. Ravi, the facilitator, asked me why I chose only Muslims living in the US or in the Western world, but honestly I didn’t realize it until he mentioned it. This particularly surprised me, because I thought I had paid attention not to be biased, I had even made a list of how many speakers are Muslims, how many of them are westerners and how many men and women there are in my selections. I think I fully understood how difficult is for media not to be biased and to be as objective as possible (which was my goal).
Actually we ended up talking about media, and whether it’s possible for them to be truly objective, and I think it’s not. There are too many aspects involved, from culture, to money and politics, and as Michael said, as long as there’s a person (and as consequence, thoughts and feelings) it’s impossible to be completely objective.
The next topic was women, stereotypes and truths about them (especially in the Middle East). We had already said how this program changed are view on Muslim women, thanks to Ameera and Yousra, and it was a huge change of opinion especially for Kaitlin and Michael, who had never had the chance before of talking with them. I had already talked with girls from Arab countries, but still my perspective is quite different now, since I don’t think they are oppressed at all. On the other side, while we were talking about how wonderful it is to see these girls so educated, intelligent and serene, I was afraid we were generalizing the opposite way; I mean, we shouldn’t generalize cases of oppression we hear of on the news, but shouldn’t generalize two cases of happiness we met either. I understood that wearing the veil it’s a personal choice, but still we cannot deny that there are oppressed women in the Arab countries, as well as the Western ones. In fact, there are many kind of oppression, and Julie showed us a picture of a woman wearing a bikini and other one wearing the burqa ,and both of them looked at the other one as oppressed.
Then we talked about polygamy, whether it is disrespectful to women, and Ameera and Yousra explained us that it’s not allowed in their religion, with very few exceptions. I was a bit upset, though, when they mentioned some kind of scientific research, which explained how polygamy is possible only for men, and Yousra said something about the fact that for a woman having more relationships at the same time could cause cancer … !!!! I hope I misunderstood. At this point, I was so angry for the technical problems, because I had so much to say, and even if I could type it, I didn’t have feedback. Fortunately, next time we’ll have time to ask whatever we want, and I want to go deeper in the topic of women because it really interests me and involves me emotionally.
EliminaI am so sad the next time will be the last, honestly. I know it may sound cheesy, but this is what I really think. I’m trying to contact everybody via facebook and create a page where we can continue to share our opinions, discuss and keep in touch (we exchanged our contacts and emails). I am looking forward to the next session, and I am determined to make the most out of it.
the link to my video project:
Eliminahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fmKD-YpxDg
By Giada Zanella
Hi everyone!
RispondiEliminaLast Tuesday I had my senventh Soliya session, it has been amazing! Everybody was in a good mood and everybody has fully participated to the session, we started discussing about the content of three videos that Mila and Sushmita (our facilitators) had sent us via email, the first video was about the manipulation of the information made by the media, taking the example of the distortion US media has done on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; we talked aout the sources we trust, where we go to find indormation on the web; Adam, a guy from California; told us about a news website I had never heard "Russia Today", saying he considers it quite neutral; I will check it to give him my onw feedback!
We also talked about blogs, Ayesha, from Pakistan, suggested us to get information from blogs, that she considers the best way to have information, because they can give you personal and human persective.
The second video was titled Obsession and was about the spreading of radical Islam and the war against the West and the last one was concentrated on the anti-americanism in Europe; the more interesting for me was the third one, mainly because it was centered on my continent and somehow I felt more involved in it, actually everybody during the session was asking my opinion about it and how accurate and truthful it was, although I do percieve, and morover some years ago I percieved some kind of anti-americanism, the reality presented in the video was a little bit exaggerated so I tried to mediate and to exlpain, especially to my american friends, that it is not exactly the European feeling toward the US.
In the second part of the session we analyzed our videos. The facilitators asked us some specific questions about our choices regarding the video meking, how we proceed, with which criterias we selected the videos and so on, actually from my perspective a lot of critics emerged, especially according to me, the videos were quite similar to each other, I expected something more realistic, and different "materials"not only interviews; some among us also proposed that it would have been nice to produce something by ourselves.
In the last part of the session we concluded with some "relaxing" topics, we talked about marriage traditions, and Maryam a girl from the Emirates descriebed us the situation in her country, I was impressed, listening to her telling us that nowadays she will not have to be obliged from her parents to marry the man her father will chooe for her, but anyway she will have to marry a guy from the Emirates because as she said her father is a bit " racist" (i would say more traditionalist).
Even if it was the concluding part of the session in which we were less concentrated I really had the imporession of the CULTURAL EXCHANGE, that is why I was really satisfied at the end of this session.
I'm lookinf forward to my last (sadly) session.
Bye everyone!
Hi!!! Sorry I am a bit late with my diary, in fact week 8 just started today, but I was so busy I wrote and couldn't find the time to post it!! Here it is:
RispondiEliminaI am a bit upset week 7 just came to the end, this session was extraordinary!!! My group and I had a great discussion today, beginning from "the gender in our society". At the very beginning our questions to each others weren't very provocative, infact we wanted the discussion to begin very smooth, to get the others into our culture.. but then, we ended up having a heated discussion about everything, from homesexuality, role of females in politics, religion influence in society and gender roles toward both intellectual and physic power.
We started our discussion with questions such as "In your culture are still there differencies in jobs for men and women?","Do you believe in gender equality?", "Role of women in advertisement?", "how salary reflects job differencies between two sexes?", "how do your society treats women and men in general?Is there a male-dominant culture?". Well, each of us tried to answer these questions.. at the first "round" everyone began saying that equality is right, that women should work as men do, they should have the same salary and treatment... but Ahmed S. from Egypt was the first to raise the first big issue: should women stay at home raising children?? In his opinion his culture is right defending the woman and urging her staying at home. Ahmed S. thinks that women are emotional and know how to treat kids.
Here I decided to chime in with my personal experience.. again I find my self in the middle of the two sides!!! I explain my mates that I come from two cultures in which the "mother role" is very important, taking for example typical italian Mamma's figure, who stays at home and cook pizza pasta and spaghetti for everyone. So, coming from this background it would be natural for me to think that women should stay at home, but in my thai culture in many cases the woman manage to be the breadwinner and the one who takes care of the family too. Furthermore I said everybody that personally I am trying to have a more modern concept of family, in which man also can be able to take care of children. Also Louie and Gabby tried to explain that in their society and families both parents grow them up, because they were divorced, so it wasn't a matter of "emotionality", both parents are able to take care of children if they want to and this doesn't mean that the mother is necessarily better than the father, even if Louie admits that he relies better on her mother for important issues, but this is only because she knows him well and she's sensitive. They explained us that it's a matter of culture, in America society is trying to brake some walls like fixed family dynamics Mother-father, there are new couples like gay couples or even single mothers and single fathers after divorce. Here was the trigger for our next discussion.. Gay's couples, homosexuality. I imagined that it would certainly be a controversial topic, thinking about Muslim religion too. In fact Ahmed S and Ahmed A didn't agree with Louie Gabby and everyone saying that homosexuality actually exists. The two Ahmed just didn't believe in it..because it isn't the norm, they don't know nothing about it and there are no gays in their countries.. because gay relationships are forbidden in Islam. Well I was stunned, I don't think they really don't know anything about homosexuality, but I do think they choose to refuse the idea of gays in their society, because of their religion. So, when they said that they never heard about it and that in the past there were only man and women to have a specific relationship in order to procreate, I just said that in Roman times homosexuality was widespread, and quite common too.
EliminaAfter this discussion we promised we will be talking about this topic again (and we did it, throught facebook too, sharing links and views about homosexuality). We moved on with our discussion, talking about differencies in salary, again saying that equality is necessary, why the woman should stay at home if she has the possibility to earn more.
We tried then to understand why we have so mixed opinions about these topics, where our way of think come from.. so culture, nationality, religion everything shapes our thoughts. The group went along with further and more specific questions. I asked to ME mates what happens if a husband dies, if the mother can keep all the money for her children. They answered that yes, the wife can keep everything that belonged to her husband. We returned to homosexuality topic, this time sharing links too: abnormal, normal, homo, hetero..we understood that these all are labels and names.
We also discussed about women fighting (joining the army). For the Egyptian guys again the woman shouldn't be in the army, she should be protected, because women are weaker then man. We laughted a bit saying that it's not true, we must judge case by case, because it can be obviously possible that a female is bigger and stronger than a men. In this point we all agreed :)
EliminaWe talked about role of women in politics.. and I asked to Ahmed-s if they ever would vote for a female candidate to lead a country, Egypt for example. Once again their answer stunned me: it is forbidden!!!! Even being a judge is forbidden.. i didn't know it could be forbidden!! With this last touch of surprise we realized that it was 19.30 and our session was at the end.. so we said goodbye and suggested everyone to add each other on facebook so we could be able to discuss more out soliya sessions too. I am very sad my project is coming to an end so soon.. so I defenetely think that next time I'll ask more questions and I'll take risks again, even with new provoquing issues! Anyway it's so nice that my group can still laugh togheter and make jokes about everything even after a difficult discussion as homosexuality, this confirms that we are a great group and that everybody understood that we are here only to discuss and exchanging opinions, not to convince anybody to change their mind, only to reflect on things!!
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaI'm very sorry for my late but I had a very busy week!
Anyway,in the last session me and a guy from Egypt managed the conversation, making questions about the conflict in Ghaza.
It has been quite difficult because not everybody knew the topic of our discussion, so a guy offered to explain how the conflict began and its reasons.
Then we discuss about a possible solution to the conflict, but we didn't have the same vision. Indeed the guys from Egypt thought that the arabian people should leave the Palestine, while the "western" one thought that the twos cultures should accept themseolves living toghether.
But as I said before this solution was absurd.
Then it has been said that every country of the world should help this populations, but also here there were very different points of view, in fact some believed that this sort of help would worsen the situation.
Personaly, this conversation has been very interesting but also difficult! Because I'd liked to say a lot of things but my vocabulary didn't allow me to express myself! =( But this matter didn't discourage me and even if my language was quite simple, I shared my ideas!
Waiting for the next and last session, I say you goodbye!
See you next week!
Bye,
Jessica
Unfortunately I can't come to the meeting on friday, because of my job. Is this a problem?
Elimina