Saturday 22 February 2014

Visit from local artist


Can you use art to communicate a political or humanitarian message.  We invited Dublin artist Ruby Staunton to St. Kevin's to speak to us.  Ruby gave a presentation showing us all the different ways art has been used in the past to get across a political message.  
We got a lot of ideas from Ruby for our awareness day. Watch this space...



Here we are at the beginning of our project.  Very enthusiastic and looking forward to getting started.  We had been watching the news and looked at some you tube clips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_88DhYEAzU - this gave us a very brief history of how the war began and some of the politics behind it.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbKIiR5pRvk - this clip tells the story of a young Syrian boy working a clinic in Aleppo.  It highlights the plight of Syrian children and shows how their basic human rights are not being met.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yECmG1Dn2M - this is another clip showing how it is the life of ordinary everyday civilians that is effected.  

We decided that we would like to do something to highlight the plight of the Syrian people.  We do not know if this is possible or if we can make a difference but we will try.
 

Thursday 6 February 2014





Our class 5r3 had a journalist  from the Irish independent come in and talk to us about his experience in Syria. He spoke about how he got there, the danger's he faced and the experience he got from it.

Jason's Experience
Jason talked about how he got to Syria. He described his ordeal as nothing short of frightening. Jason told us how he had to cross fast flowing river whilst trying to avoid Turkish border patrols every 15 minutes. He described his "Boat" as a barrel no larger then an arms length wide. When he eventually got there he met an ordinary man know as "The plumber", who had taken up arms against the government militia after his family had been killed by them. Jason spent 2 nights in Syria before returning to Turkey to safety.

What we took from the Talk
After Jason told us of his experience it really set the field for us and gave us a true insight to what actually goes on in Syria to date. It really inspired our class to continue with the NGO and let the Syrian people know that they are not alone

GOAL Public speaker talk


Our class 5r3 had a public speaker from the Irish charity GOAL come in and explain to use a bit about GOAL and what role the charity plays in Syria.

Meeting Louise
As our class poured into the religion room to meet Louise, we were excited to hear what Louise had to say about GOAL and what role the Irish owned charity had to play in Syria.

Valuable Information
Louise gave our class valuable information to what we needed to do to set up our own NGO and what our mission statement should en-tale. We got a lot of information on GOAL and really gave us an insight to what GOAL does in Syria.

The Future of our NGO
After our public speaker Louise's talk it really gave us the confidence to continue on with our NGO and gave us real insight to what an actual NGO really does and how it operates. The speaker was great and we had a lot of fun in the process. We are anxious to continue on with our NGO