Kitabna - Our Book CIC

It was such a great moment to come together with our project partners and participants of our 2023 training in Yerevan to launch the Kitabna toolkit for story-writing with communities affected by conflict and disaster last weekend. Developing this toolkit and this event with David, Arpine, Liana and Asia with the support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council was the perfect way to celebrate 10 years of Kitabna - Our Book CIC - making our work ever more available. We learnt so much last week when we interviewed our participants, Ani, Narine, Lilit, Gohar and learnt about their use of the toolkit in their psychological practice with children across Armenia over the past year. We heard that Kitabna’s tools could be part of acceptance commitment therapy, a process in which a person can uncover the values and goals they have, and in knowing make their life better and more stable. We also heard how the toolkit offered a structured approach to storytelling therapies, with easy-to-follow steps, and that it could potentially be used in schools in Armenia.   We heard how story creation allowed children to use characters to express their emotions, and problems, and through the characters find their own solutions. This created a distance for the child which allowed for helpful perspective. At the launch we hosted Mariam who has been piloting the toolkit with children and teenagers in Berdavan, a village on the border with Azerbaijan. They all came to the launch and we heard their beautiful stories. We asked the children what they would tell other children about writing a story and making a book with out toolkit. They said:   “It gives us experience; individuality; we are getting to know ourselves; speaking our mind and controlling how it comes out on paper. We are trying to understand what skills we have and are working on those skills. We are learning how to work on a text, what pictures to use, what kinds of words to use, where to write them, how to finish a book. Working together on this book allowed us to enjoy the experience and make friends and we learnt a lot from each other. We could also network, gain popularity (!) and learn more, developing new skills just as we do every day in our life – trying to be better.”   “When asked what we would advise to little children and our peers, we would say just start writing because maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s right, but it really helps to put your thinking on paper. It will work out in the end.”   “When we wrote the stories it was a way to find out more about our culture, because I wrote about our village and I learnt a lot about my village and told other people about our village. And a lot of people outside of our village don’t know about the stories written in our book." Our toolkit is freely available to download from MHPSS.net: https://lnkd.in/g8ZAqJ5g

Amidst work on the latest My Hero book, our beautiful project with Save the Children in Poland, and our toolkit launch in Armenia, it was such a joy to pitch this workshop first to my partner, Aleksandra Magryta, and then to Martha Crean, Public Art Coordinator at the University of Bristol, when she invited me to come back and work with Somali mums and teenagers at their Little Library this February 2024. Last summer at the Little Library, we rewrote some folktales, with a twist… cautionary tales of children being stolen away by monsters were reworked with children fighting back, taking on the mythical Dhegdeer with the help of a Hyena King! This year, and for the first time, we are combining Kitabna - Our Book CIC story-writing tools with Aleks’ experience of Wen-Do workshop facilitation for women and teenage girls, supporting them in the creation of emotional boundaries and self-defence 💜 it makes sense to me, as last time we saw mums and their teenage daughters writing new narratives, together, that brought about safe and satisfying conclusions. The place where our work meets is that of the voice: how we use it, and help others use it to tell people who they are - and about their right to dignity and respectful treatment. Nothing diminishes that: not our gender, nor our ethnicity, immigration status, abilities or sexuality. It was a resounding yes from Martha and Lizzie, and what a joy - and first! - to stand beside my partner and share some (creative) principles of self-expression. I am so proud of Aleks and the skills all who practice Wen-Do share with women and girls. Some demonstration and insights from Aleks here, last week on television in Poland - “Women using their voice to protect themselves” https://lnkd.in/ev7YKbV3. I also had the chance to meet graphic novelist, Zaynab Abdi, author of “Voice for Refuge” late last year, and she loved hearing about the work the Little Library teenagers were doing in Bristol. So… what comes next, with these Bristolian teenagers and their Wellspring Settlement stories, let’s see… and of course, everyone is welcome to join us at the following events 💜 ******************* "In this workshop we will explore how animals use their voices and reflect on how and when we humans use our voices. We will use prompts and games to help us write and illustrate stories in groups. Important information: Please note that this workshop will be most suitable for children age 8 + and their carers. Parents/carers will be encouraged to join in with the activities alongside their children." For the morning:   https://lnkd.in/eHhMrFnr   For the afternoon:   https://lnkd.in/eB4fQSdq  

From all of us at Kitabna - Our Book CIC, wishing for peaceful horizons in the new year of 2024, and a holiday season of rest. So proud of everyone in the Kitabna team, and projects, working in their different worlds, and making time to support each other. Thanks to everyone we met this year, and to our beautiful team: Lin Bilal in Turkey, supporting the elderly in conflict and displacement; to Asia Haidar, in her journalism work for Der Spiegel in Germany, reporting now on Israel-Palestine; Shannon Rayner for her great support of refugee and asylum seeking communities with Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants in the UK; Helen Patuck for story-writing workshop delivery and book creation in the UK, Armenia and Poland this year, and Usama Alshughry for his MHPSS work with IDP communities in Iraqi Kurdistan, and translation of our 2022-23 annual report, into Arabic, just in time for Christmas. 2023 has already given us so much more to reflect and work on, and 2024 will be the 10-year anniversary of the founding of Kitabna. Looking forward to sharing more about that in the new year 💛 You can read all of our reports (which link to all of our latest freely available stories, resources and guides) since the inauguration of the CIC in 2021 here, on our Reports page, in English and Arabic: https://lnkd.in/e_4BYmC3 ✨

A teenager's dialogue with her future self... a debate between the sun and moon... a hungry bear befriending a squirrel... dogs Bolek and Lolek losing their homes in the forest... these are just a few snippets of the magical stories Ukrainian children created in Kitabna - Our Book CIC's fieldwork with Save the Children Poland' CFS ("child-friendly spaces") in carehomes this November. Almost a decade now into the founding of Kitabna, it's been such a joy to me to rediscover the power of the "child-friendly space", where children can come and be children, even in unstable situations, after fleeing conflict and disaster. As a teacher of creative writing, I believe primarily in creating the right environment for dreaming: a safe place for expression, listening ears and the encouragement of imagination. These methods only work in the hands of brilliant teams, facilitators, teachers, carers, whose experiences I always learn so much from. I am always so humbled by the way we can work and connect across so many languages - in this case, English, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian. How wonderful to me to share stories co-created with children and teens in Libya, Ireland, Syria and Jordan over the past 9 years, with these new teams in Poland - and to see those stories, the great work of former colleagues and friends, bring smiles and inspiration to a new response. To see these practices evolve again, with Pomeranian forests, animals and the beautiful landscapes of Central Europe at the centre of stories, has been a huge joy to me. We join hands and hearts in great work, and great words 💜 I can't wait to receive stories this December ahead of the illustration of a new book series, that will share the voices of these truly wonderful children and teenagers in 2024. When Kitabna began in 2014, in Lebanon, with the support of our Arabic school, Saifi, Save the Children and NGOs like the Norwegian Refugee Council, World Vision, UNHCR, and countless civil society initiatives and friends, we called ourselves "our book" - sharing in a belief that there should be no lost generations. There has never been a greater need to share the voices of children, and to try to imagine - and create - the safe world they want to live in.