New training shoes

The ladies

I wasn't much looking forward to the workshop. After bad training experiences in Chad I always worry I'm going to get a room full of blank faces who would really rather not be there, and probably rather I wasn't there either. And after a few years of brushing up against development activity in various lands, there's a lot of: 'capacity building; empowerment; conflict resolution' and other such jargon whose impact can be nebulous, at the best of times.

But I knew at least I'd be in good hands with my new Egyptian friend who I think must have been a dervish in her former life. The training was our idea and she has Arabic as a first language, fluent English and an educational background. She's thoughtful and kind with a brilliant sense of humour.

And, crucially, our objectives were clear and simple.

Our remit was to train teenage girls from Syria and Jordan how to make photo films about each other. The pilot project was sponsored by UNICEF. There are problems in host communities in Jordan after the massive influx of refugees from Syria. And I've always felt that sitting in a room, interviewing a stranger, taking their pictures, and listening to them tell their story, enables you to like them more - or at least to understand them better.

We had a group of 8 girls: Jordanian Jordanians, Palestinian Jordanians and Syrians from Homs, Dera'a and Damascus. They were receptive from the start, keen to learn and started making friends with each other immediately. Volume levels got steadily higher all week. We worked solidly for 8 days, culminating in 2 days editing the material they had collected during the week. Some of the photographs were stunning, and the interviews, although they needed a lot of guidance from us, contained some important truths.

At the beginning of the week, one of the Syrian girls looked entirely closed and terrified - a shy 16 year old like a house with none of the lights on, and no one at home. By day 5 she had given a lovely interview. She explained: 'Any little thing can make me afraid' and went on to say how her biggest dream was to work with children, paricularly Syrians as they were united in their fear, and she felt she could help. By day 8 she was dressed in colours reminiscent of a parakeet, her eyes shining and mouth set in a huge grin. Her photographs were beautiful, and she found she had a voice.

At some point during the week I realised it felt like I was being carried. I didn't know if it was because of the positive vibes and energy emitting from my new friend, or from the girls, or simply that I had reverted to my former life, with the dwarves in the able hands of the Glammy down the road in Amman. But something came to our aid that week. And the feedback was positive - brilliantly timed with the arrival of one of the UNICEF team who came to see how we were getting on.

One of the Syrians raised her hand and said: 'We've never been given anything like this before, and we never meet Jordanians as we're afraid. This has been one of the best weeks of my life.' A tearful Jordanian girl said: 'We feel you've been doing this training with love in your hearts.' As I say, something came to help us, and we both finished the week with as much energy as we had started. All I could muster in Arabic to say at the end to this great group of girls, whose faces had become as familiar as my own hand after our time together, was: 'Your faces are in my head and my heart.'

It's amazing to see what spraying a little bit of water on the desert can do. All those tiny green shoots, that you would never know were there, start to peek through the crust. On day 8 there were some tearful goodbyes. Mascara everywhere. And we've been booked to train 8 boys in the autumn.

Results to come when we've had the screening next week.