By RACHA RUSTOM

My name is Racha Rustom and I'm a second year mass communications student at Jinan University in Tripoli. Originally, I'm from Akkar but I decided to leave my village and rent a house with several friends in Tripoli so that I could get an education.

The nature and the people make life in Akkar really beautiful, but it is very difficult for the youth to fulfill their ambitions due to the lack of opportunities.

However, once in Tripoli, I was confronted with a completely different world because there is no trust between the people, there is no love, everyone lives in their own world and no one looks out for the needs of others.

When we first arrived to the workshop, we noticed four guys from Bab el Tabaneh and all of my peers immediately rejected them. Actually, one of the guys made an insult to the group and in all honesty, if I had encountered them on the streets, I would probably have not engaged in any way with them because of their behavior.

The rest of my group wanted nothing to do with them. But they are human beings particularly in need of attention and love and by simply rejecting them, we only push them to do bad things and we help perpetuate this bad behavior. And one of the main issues in Lebanon is that we tend to judge one another based on looks, religion or class.

To ensure there were no problems the facilitators decided to break up the two groups. I felt it necessary to challenge my own ignorance, so I decided to leave the group of my peers and join the kids from Bab el Tabaneh.

During the last two days of our group's session, I arrived early so that I could spend the day with them because I believe young people are the basis of a nation. If they’re fine, then we're all fine. Although it’s true that I’m able to attend university and get an education, at the end of the day, we are all the same.

During the two days that I spent with the youth from Bab el Tabaneh, I had a chance to listen to their personal lives and learn about some of the issues they have to deal with on a daily basis.

They're really tired because they have had extremely hard experiences due to their current environment. This is why I wanted to be involved in facilitating their process of healing by showing them that there are people who can see past their exterior posture of being tough, which they need to survive in the outside world, and are genuinely interested in supporting them. 

Like today, a few of them made me promise that I’ll teach them how to read and write and that I’ll stay in touch once this workshop is over. Because they desperately need someone to direct them, so that they can begin the process of ridding themselves of their bad habits. 

In the end, I feel that this workshop was extremely positive in several ways.

First, it brought together various youth from different social, religious and economic classes, with the goal of teaching us our similarities, in terms of pain and trauma, as well as how to interact with one another, how to listen and converse with one another.

Second, as Lebanese, workshops like these are extremely important for the young generation because we need to learn how to work together as a country, as Lebanese people and not according to our sect or class if we are able to ever end the constant violence that we continue to inflict on one another. We need fresh voices to represent us as a new generation of Lebanese that will express and communicate to our leaders that we want change. 

As for my peers, I would like to tell them that they were presented with a unique opportunity by participating in this workshop, and that they were close-minded in their approach of dealing with the youth from Bab el Tebbaneh by degrading them instead of taking advantage of a unique opportunity. 

I would like to tell our local politicians that the goal of politics is to provide for the the happiness of the Lebanese people by giving us a sense of security. But unfortunately, we have been robbed of that.

I want our politicians to look around and listen to the needs of the people and the pain and destruction we are experiencing in Tripoli, Akkar, Bab el Tabaneh and Jabal Mohsen and see how many people are in need. People are poor, hungry, and we have been robbed of our most basic human rights.

Notice the suffering of your people. You could put a smile on the faces of the children by providing the most simple things like proper shelter, jobs, water, electricity and food. But instead you continue to use our lives to play games and enhance your power and wealth. 
 
For myself, I see communication as a tool that, if used wisely, can improve the way cultures and communities view one another as well as how we view ourselves. I decided to major in mass communication because as a medium it has offered me completion, in terms of obtaining knowledge and the constant day-to-day interaction with the people.

I hope that this will allow me to pinpoint some of the issues facing the Arab world and to make use of the media to educate the local population so that they realize their power to change things.


For the latest news about MENASSAT's Tripoli workshops, go to the workshop's group on Arab Media Community.