More than 50 years after their uprooting from Palestine, a fourth generation of Palestinian children are coming to terms with the overwhelming challenges of being refugees: marginalisation, discrimination, poverty, unemployment, lack of civil and legal rights, and deteriorating educational and health services. The political and economic future for the Palestinian refugee in Lebanon is even bleaker than that which confronted their parents and grandparents. Unlike their elders, this new generation lacks sustained social and cultural resources to draw upon to make sense of the harsh fate which has befallen them. Each year, older community members, who have been repositories of folklore, transmitters of collective memory, and links to the Palestinian past, become fewer. Meanwhile, camp schools' curricula offer scant materials concerning Palestinian culture, history, and folklore, all of which help to build young refugees' sense of identity, meaning, and self-esteem.In the face of this deepening human crisis, only a handful of institutions and individuals are mounting effective responses. AL-JANA / The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, a non-profit organization founded in 1990, is one such institution.
