In this blog, Miss Clara Vázquez shares her experience implementing The Hands Up Project in Mexico and bringing its stories, activities, and values into her country.
Read More
By Our Events Coordinator, Ashraf Kuhail, in the UK.
There is a quiet, profound defiance in a child choosing to open a book when the world around them is falling apart.
Read More
In this blog, our volunteer Karen shares her reflections on the two weeks she spent at the Hands Up Educational Space in Cairo, working alongside our students and fellow volunteer Tony.
Read More
By Mohammed Hisham,
Literature has the power to connect students with ideas that extend far beyond the pages of a story. This week, students embarked on an exciting journey with Jebene
Read More
By Our Volunteer & Learning Coordinator, Safa Ahmed, The Challenge Behind the Impressive Vocabulary. One challenge that many of our volunteers have noticed across Hands Up projects is learners' tendency to use what we sometimes call "big words".
Read More
1) Organise the class into groups of three or four. Ask them to discuss how they feel when they see the flag of England or the flag of the United Kingdom displayed.
Read More
It becomes a voice that survives distance. A memory that refuses to disappear.
A bridge between people who may never meet, yet somehow still understand one another.
We’ll never really know what led Fatema to write ‘Not for shooting gun’ instead of ‘Not for shooting guns’. But we do know that we’re glad that she did, because this is poetry, and, like all good poetry, it uses language in original ways to help us understand something about the world.
Read More
What does it really mean to “find your voice” in English?
For me, it was not about grammar rules or memorising vocabulary. It was about confidence, identity, and expression.
Read More
‘One for my brother’ is our latest collection of handwritten and illustrated poetry by children. It came out of last year’s poetry competition, where we asked children to write a short poem using 14 year old Tala Rasa’s painting (done in Gaza in 2022) as the source of inspiration.
Read More
By Liz Colo
This week’s blog post is written by Liz, one of our many brilliant volunteers in Spain.
Spring has definitely sprung here in Jerez de la Frontera, in the south of Spain. The heavy rain has gone, the sun is shining, the oranges have been harvested, and the cherry trees are in full bloom.
Read More
I was lucky enough to spend most of January at the Hands Up Project’s educational space in Cairo. One of the things I was doing was helping to set up a remote theatre space so that plays could be performed live from one of the rooms to classrooms around the world.
Read More
Today, my heart received one of the most beautiful gifts a mother’s heart could receive.
From a small room in Cairo, three children lifted their voices and sang to me.
Read More
Last year the day we set out, Israel broke the ceasefire in Gaza. This year, the day we set out, it attacked, with the US, Iran. The Pilgrimage seems to have the knack of marching in step with catastrophic events.
Read More
From Poems to Presentations: Building Confident Speakers
At The Hands Up Project, our mission has always been about empowering Palestinian children to share their stories with the world and amplifying their voices through a variety of creative opportunities.
Read More
By Safa, Volunteer Coordinator
In language learning, writing is often viewed as a daunting, even dull, skill. Drawing on my own experience as a teacher from Gaza, I know how little attention it can receive in English classrooms.
Read More
By Haya Oruq
Standing inside El-Jesuit Theater in Cairo as part of the Welcome to Gaza performance was a moment that felt both new and deeply familiar. It was not just another project for me — it was a return to something that has lived inside me for many years.
Read More
As has become a regular delight for a few of us supporters of Hands Up project in Totnes, last Saturday morning we found ourselves again transported into the classrooms of the Hands up Project’s edcuational space in Cairo, now full of refugee children and young people from Gaza.
Read More
By Dr. Sulaiman
Coordinator of Cairo Space, The Hands Up Project – Egypt
As the Coordinator of Cairo Space for The Hands Up Project in Egypt, I have the privilege of witnessing the impact that dedicated educators and humanitarians can have on our students every day.
Read More
More than twenty years ago, when my kids were still very young, we got a visit from some old friends of mine from Denmark. They brought a memory game with them as a gift for my family. The game was called Hønsefræs (in Danish) and it became one of the most popular games in my family for many years.
Read More