#WAVE: women from Gaza to receive digital audiovisual training over the next 2 years.
Gaza, Palestine
Theatre Day Productions ( #TDP ) announces the launch of its Gender Equality initiative Women Audio Visual Education “WAVE”
The initiative is funded by @SabrinaHoUNESCO under #YouAreNext
WAVEaims to empower young women cultural entrepreneurs under the age of 40 (#U40) in the digital creative industries in the #Gaza_Strip in Palestine.
AboutWAVE
For longest time, in the Gaza community, the role of women is mostly limited by domestic life where women’s role is to carry the load of a daily home routine. Women’s participation in social life is constrained by stereotyped views of Gaza’s male-led community. Cultural, artistic, and creative activities remain a taboo for the vast majority of girls and women.
As such, in 2013 TDP designed a special cultural program for Gaza women. The program consists of capacity building trainings through TDP’s in-the-house audiovisual 3-year curriculum and its pertinent on-the-job trainings and activities.
Five years since we started the program, it still keeps its momentum: more and more women are interested to join TDP. However, women are trapped in the blockade, the siege of Gaza. With that, they cannot get out of the Gaza Strip to catch up with latest technology, and they certainly cannot take their stories out from behind the siege!
With the audiovisual world as the only possible outlet for those women, theWAVEinitiative intends to train at least 12 young women (age 18-40) by bringing them out of Gaza “virtually”.
The 24-month initiative is a customized capacity building program for pioneer audiovisual women in Gaza. The structure of the program is dynamic and exciting, and supplies all the practical, creative and technical skills needed to succeed in the digital audiovisual culture landscape. Specifically, the initiative intersects 3 key elements:
– Digital media with a good combination of technical and creative skills
– Drama and storytelling as means to boost creativity, personal, and entrepreneurial skills.
– Entrepreneurial opportunities for 12 women from Gaza in the communities
As such, Theatre Day Productions is partnering with national, regional, and international audiovisual and digital media experts and organizations, as well as local NGOs and civil society organizations spread-out across the 5 governorates of the Gaza Strip.
The program, in its form, is based on joint community activities to inspire the participating women of entrepreneurial ideas.
This initiative falls under the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, while giving a priority to Human Rights, Gender Equality, and the Empowerment of Women and Girls.
Guided by their visions – both Theatre Day Productions and UNESCO, with the support of Sabrina Ho – are addressing inequalities, narrowing the knowledge gaps between men and women in the cultural sector, and connecting the besieged Gaza to the rest of the world with digital means
