Projects on Al-Qaws

Social & Cultural Change

Sun, 31 Aug 2014 18:55:23 +0200

Our large scale social change efforts harness grassroots as well as institutional power to advance positive change in relation to gender and sexual issues amongst influential civil society institutions, youth and students, news media, and cultural organizations. These initiatives provide Palestinian society with the space to engage in a responsible public debate, aiming to break prejudices, combat violence, and challenge the dominance of heteronormative notions of sexual identity, homosexual orientations, and gender. These projects aspire to raise awareness and build active partnerships amongst diverse groups in society, and to provide innovative, accessible, and engaging tools and methods to address gender and sexual diversity issues. We create multi-media and music projects, conduct educational trainings and networking events with civil society organizations, and hold an academic summer school program on sexual and gender diversity.

Engaging Civil Society with Professional Training
Out of an in-depth field research we conducted on civil society institutions working in Palestinian society, we developed a strategy for aligning civil society institutions and NGO staff members of human rights, feminist, and health organizations with alQaws’ vision of a society-wide embrace of gender and sexual diversity. Our civil society training and partnership initiative continues to expand, and we now train organizational staff, activists, high school teachers, and more, preparing them to work with groups on issues of sexual and gender diversity. In the trainings (which vary in length according to organizational needs), organizational members acquire basic analytic tools and group facilitation skills, as well as build their knowledge in issues of sexual and gender diversity.

Professional Advocacy Groups
The creative cultivation of professional advocacy groups became a major focus for alQaws when we created our strategic plan for 2016-2018. In this strategy, we focus on a problem in a professional sector (such as human rights NGOs, schools and universities, therapy and counseling, news media, etc.), and carefully explore opportunities for change within leading institutions through fieldwork, interviews, and research. The exploration stage helps us focus on a narrow set of the most promising and willing partners for training and education on gender and sexual diversity. Using tools relevant to the professional field (such as trainings, peer groups, or collaborations), alQaws facilitates actions that make incremental progress toward small and large goals, such as creating large-scale institutional change. For our therapists’ advocacy groups, we aim to create a friendly therapists list so that these services are available to LGBTQ individuals who come to us in need, yet we also aim for these therapists to continue this progress through peer advocacy initiatives (in this case, therapists organized a National Study Day) that have the potential to shape their professional field at large. In our new initiative to shift local media coverage on sexual and gender diversity issues, the tools and goals may differ, but the strategy to transform a professional field is basically the same—identifying opportunities, establishing partners, peer advocacy and networking, and building a movement.

Sparking Intellectual Debate
We organize and curate lectures and discussions in public cafes, on university campuses, and in international and online journals on gender and sexual diversity issues in our society. Our now bi-annual Sexual and Gender Diversity Academic School brings together a wide group of academics and students for three days around the theme of Sexual Politics in the Colonial Context of Palestine, which we then develop into publications the following year. With these intellectual initiatives, we further promote a relevant and constructive public discourse on gender and sexual diversity that is based on the actual experiences of the Palestinian LGBTQ community. Our Academic School allows us to capitalize on and foster academia as a safe sphere to discuss controversial issues like sexual and gender diversity, helping to combat the tendency in social and intellectual discussion to frame oppressive structures and negative perceptions around these issues as “unique” to Palestinian society.

Transforming Local Media
In our two-year field research study, titled “Attitudes & Trends among Palestinian Media,” we developed a full picture of the local media’s past and current role in addressing sexual and gender diversity issues, and the opportunities for us to intervene. Moving forward, we will advocate among professional Palestinian journalists and media agencies to fundamentally shift their approach to gender and sexual diversity issues, encouraging positive coverage and thoughtful debate of otherwise taboo or maligned topics, such as homosexuality, violence targeting gender and sexual minorities, women’s sexuality, and more. Current initiatives directly expose media professionals to a local discourse on sexuality, seek to build trust and understanding with prominent journalists, and lay the foundation for partnerships that we believe will radically re-shape the local media’s approach to gender and sexual diversity.

Cultural and media production
alQaws highly values creating its own cultural and media production as a means to fundamentally impact social discourse and culture at large. We mobilize local artistic resources to produce original artistic projects that engage gender and sexual diversity in variously alternative, creative, and accessible ways. Our first-of-its-kind multi-media project, Ghanni A’an Ta’arif / “Singing Sexuality” (www.ghanni.net), engages youth and students on issues of gender and sexuality diversity, identity, political engagement, and society. This initiative began as a massive collaborative artist and activist production, including our first full album of original songs, a live album release concert, and the creation of an interactive online multimedia platform. Moving forward, we will continue to partner with influential local media organizations to mobilize other local artistic and cultural resources to produce new original media pieces (like animations, illustrations, video campaigns, and more), aiming to broadcast LGBT and sexual and gender diversity issues by targeting a new generation of tech-savvy Palestinian youth.

Community-Building

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 12:04:38 +0200

alQaws knows that community work on issues of sexual and gender diversity cannot develop without the integration of the groups who are most vulnerable to gender and sexual oppression. We continuously work to build up local and national leadership, especially amongst youth, to increase their awareness, influence, mandate, and social resilience. alQaws provides space, including community centers like our West Bank Community Center in Ramallah, for the development of strong, proactive, and politically aware communities of individuals who live and celebrate all layers of their identity. Across the areas where we work (in four hubs: Haifa in the North, East Jerusalem, Jaffa in the Center, and Ramallah in the West Bank), we run programs that provide rare creative, critical, and celebratory spaces in the domain of sexual and gender diversity:

West Bank Community Center
Our West Bank Community Center in Ramallah is not only a working space for our activists in the area, it is also a vital hub for all our West Bank outreach, networking, and leadership work, as well as a vibrant space for cultural and social events. The Center continues our efforts to institutionalize our activism and work in the West Bank, and we are seeing ever-increasing signs that our work is being recognized as necessary, important, and desired.

At the Community Center, we hold activist groups and outreach programs, meet with new members from the Ramallah area, while conducting monthly outreach meetings in Nablus, Bethlehem, and more remote areas. We also program regular leadership-building trainings, film screenings, Hawamesh Ramallah (intellectual monthly discussions built on the successful Hawamesh model in Haifa); cultural events like BBQs, hiking, and more; and listening sessions for activists to share stories and challenges.

Local & National LQBTQ Leadership
Building strong, diverse, confident, active LGBTQ communities is critical to our progress toward shifting our society’s approach to sexual and gender diversity. We run regular local leadership-building platforms in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Yaffa, and Haifa, as well as large activist annual retreats that build alQaws’ national leadership. Our leadership outreach focuses on engaging influential and marginalized individuals in our communities (such as youth, women, and trans*) so that we have a dynamic and accountable leadership.

Youth & Student Groups
We run youth groups focused on understanding and discussing sexuality and associated issues in relation to the individual, the family and community, and broader society and political and social change. Youth and student groups take place in rotating areas, such as East Jerusalem, Haifa, and Yaffa, bringing together youth from city hubs, as well as more remote areas. Groups are facilitated by an alQaws coordinator, and we created a new training guide that will allow us to train new coordinators and expand our groups even further. Our youth groups are frequently a first point of contact with youth who were previously unaware of our work, and many youth attend other activities or take on active roles within alQaws after their groups end.

Hawamesh Intellectual Discussion Series
We began our Hawamesh ("margins" in Arabic) monthly discussion forum in 2014 in Haifa, a hub for civil society organizations and influential cultural leaders in our society. Held at our office or in a popular Haifa café run by Almahata, Palestinian Youth Cooperative, Hawamesh quickly became widely popular with an engaged and diverse audience. True to its name, Hawamesh takes on topics widely seen as belonging to the margins of mainstream Palestinian culture, such as LGBTQ issues, and puts them in the center stage. In this way, Hawamish aims to fill a void in mainstream discourse by connecting topics traditionally considered insider issues exclusive to the LGBT community to a broadly relevant social and political context. Our monthly series now runs in both Haifa and Ramallah at our West Bank Community Center, reaching hundreds of activists and academics, as well as many other LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ individuals interested in broadening their knowledge about sexual and gender issues in our society.

Queer Community Parties
We recently expanded this longstanding and incredibly popular social event—the largest gathering for LGBTQ Palestinians. Our monthly parties are now more than ever a platform for outreach and education, since, in 2016, we created educational materials and performances on sexual harassment, consent, and personal space. Parties reach several hundred participants each, with increased women’s and trans*’ participation after concerted outreach and promotion. We developed a social media plan for increasing alQaws’ visibility online, including in social media and through our website, and published thought-provoking visuals through every party that attracted a lot of attention online and offline. Our parties are a celebratory and safe space, but increasingly also a space to begin critical reflection or take the first steps to becoming alQaws activists and leaders.

Support & Counseling

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 12:04:26 +0200

alQaws fills a major gap in our society’s health services by providing basic counseling services (both peer-to-peer and professional support) that focus on sexual orientation, sexuality, and gender identity issues. alQaws’ support hotline and gender and sexual diversity-friendly professional counseling provide responsive and friendly support services for LGBTs, people with non-conforming sexual and gender identities and practices, and anyone who needs this type of support. Under this field, alQaws operates three main projects:

National Hotline – AlKhat: Listening and Information
Alkhat is a volunteer-run resource and support “hotline” (an online chat platform and phone number) for individuals and the general community to privately and safely reach out for support or information related to sexuality and LGBT and gender identity. AlKhat operates twice a week on Sundays and Wednesdays between 17:00 – 21:00, via phone at 072-222-0202 or chat support at www.alkhat.org