This is not a work experience, it’s a life experience.
I'm not going to count the things that I did learn while working at Al-Jana, because I feel that a part of my growing up happened in the center.
Every little work I did gave me a new skill, every person I met through the center gave me a new perspective or inspired me, every project we survived build a new aspect in my personality, every kid I met during activities brought me energy. That’s why I can’t make a checklist with what I have learned.
Though, I remember that when first came to the centre I was trying to learn clay-motion film making, the posters and the books, the tables and the smell, were things that I kept with me for an entire year before to start volunteering with the centre for the film festival.
I remember when Moataz asked me if I‘d like to participate in the preparation for the first summer camp, and how I changed since the first one till the last one (that I participated to) in the beginning I still had the concept that learning is happening inside the training room and with the trainer, before to understand that learning is what I was doing and what was everybody doing by living this experience.
I remember my feeling, every time I was in my Public Relation class feeling bored of the very theoretical information that I already explored by practice by working in the centre.
Building a cultural identity is not a work experience, it’s something you identify when you know more about your cultural heritage, when you explore how it’s still living and when you tie up your connection to it by meeting it every day in an embroidery graphic, or by a tea cup, by the music you listen to and by having people around you proud of this cultural identity.
I can’t count what I have learned and I can’t tell all what I have lived, you can’t pass by this place without changing (in a positive way).
