2018 Summer Workshops | AKGC
Donation protected
“For me, from inside, I can't tell people what I feel, I couldn't let it reach out to anyone. So in the hopes of being able to say something, I film." ~ Raghad
Dear Friends,
These last couple of years have not been easy. The local and global news has been heartbreaking. Populations everywhere are being uprooted. It’s hard to know where or how to help in a way that’s real and can make a lasting difference. But we at AKGC are full of hope. We know that this is a critical moment in history, when women are breaking through barriers to tell their stories, and we ask ourselves, who are the girls and young women whose stories and voices aren’t being heard?
AKGC started as a local arts initiative for Syrian refugee girls in Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan, but starting this summer Another Kind of Girl Collective seeks to expand and become a global force for girls and young women to tell their stories. With this project, we intend to connect, collaborate, and co-create multimedia artworks and stories with other young women living in displaced, transitory communities around the world, one community at a time. In expanding our reach across cultures, borders and shifting localities of home, this collective of artists will put communities of girls into conversation with some of the hardest to reach populations, allow them to challenge stereotypes and assumptions, provide them with tools to expand their artistic portfolios, and connect them to resources that will enable them to share their stories more widely and become active players in shifting and shaping public opinion, policies, and cultural norms.
PROGRAMMING FOR SUMMER 2018:
The young women of AKGC are ready to create a new map for Another Kind of Girl and the work begins this summer in Jordan and Peru:
1. We will DEEPEN OUR WORK WITH SYRIAN GIRLS in Jordan through a media arts workshop in Za’atari Refugee Camp for a new group of Syrian girls, mentored by the older AKGC artists. In our workshops we create with the girls a safe space for them to reflect on their stories and engage in first-person, cinematic storytelling, emphasizing curiosity and exploration alongside narrative, based on empowering their imaginative visions.
2. We will begin to EXPAND OUR COLLECTIVE through our first cross-border, collaborative project: a film created by young filmmaker-mothers in Jordan and Peru. Working with the filmmakers from an amazing media arts project initiated by artist EB Landesberg in Peru 3 years ago, four young women living in displaced communities--two indigenous Shipibo teens (Karoly and Christy) in Lima, Peru, and two Syrian teens (Khaldiya and Marah) living as refugees in Jordan-- will document their transition from childhood to motherhood, and the layers of instability they must overcome to be able to raise their children well, as they themselves come of age. Their film will bring us closer to the lived experience of young marginalized women, opening up a dialogue with other women in similar circumstances, challenging the dominant narratives of pity, victimhood, and “voicelessness”.
3. We will BROADEN OUR IMPACT as the older AKGC artists curate a traveling exhibit of their multimedia stories, existing and new, that they’ve created as they’ve come of age as refugees in Jordan. 4-5 years ago, these girls fled from Daraa, Syria, where the revolution began, between the ages of 13-16. The exhibit will invite others to experience the alchemy of how their visual impressions and diaries turned surrounding losses and foreign landscapes into new imaginative worlds, the unexpected places where they find or create beauty and humor, and the materials they draw upon to envision something beyond her immediate confines.
YOUR DONATION will make AKGC's transformative summer work in Jordan and Peru happen! We need a minimum of $8,000 by June 27th to cover all costs related to summer programming and production:
* Local transportation costs (in Jordan and Peru)
*Camper (mobile trailer) that will house and be the creative studio space for the workshops in Jordan
* Cameras and equipment (that the new Syrian girls and Peruvian girls will own)
* Stipends (for the AKGC mentors and artists, facilitators, & translator in Jordan and Peru)
* Technology for cross-border communication (phones for whatsapp & skype, computers for editing)
* Exhibit and publicity materials, transport and food for the local and traveling screening/exhibition (of their films, photos, writing, multimedia)
Donate here via GoFundMe, or if you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, please donate via our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=15914 They take a fee, but in the end it's great for everybody. Thanks again!
PLEASE SHARE OUR GOFUNDME WITH YOUR FRIENDS!
MORE ABOUT US
AKGC’s roots grew from our first media arts workshop in 2014, in a netted picnic shelter inside Jordan’s Za’atari Refugee Camp, with a small group of Syrian girls, some pocket notebooks, a bag of point-and-shoot cameras, and an electric energy and insatiable desire emanating from them to express their expansive inner-world and imagination to the outside world.
AKGC invests and roots ourselves in communities for the long-run. Nearly 5 years later, we are still working in the same two communities of Syrian refugees in Jordan. Another Kind of Girl Collective was created by that same group of Syrian girls as a global arts initiative for girls and young women living in displaced, transitory communities around the world, to connect, collaborate, and co-create multimedia artworks and stories that reflect and express their inner worlds and everyday lives – how it looks, feels and sounds from the ground, at the heart of their world.
“I live in the camp, I am within the camp, and I know the camp. An outsider will miss a lot of the deeper meanings because they haven’t felt what it’s like to live here. I want to show the rest of the world that even though we live in a refugee camp, and have different lives from others, we still have dreams and ambitions. We are creative. We are strong. We are defiant. I feel it’s my responsibility not just to tell the world that truth, but to let people see it for themselves.” ~ Khaldiya
WATCH THE SYRIAN FILMS | WATCH THE PERUVIAN FILM

For AKGC girls, home is a moving target. Whether she is a Syrian girl who has fled war and is living as a refugee in a barbed wire camp, a girl who left her family in a small nomadic village in Tibet to flee political oppression, an unaccompanied Honduran girl who has fled the Central American gang warfare and violence crisis to seek tenuous refuge in the United States, or an indigenous Shipibo girl whose community was destroyed by a fire after years of uncertainty about their rights to the land, they all have had to redefine what home means to them.
These girls did not choose their circumstances, but the tools of artistic self-expression allow them to create space of their own and reframe their identities, reflect on and shape stories on their own terms, and (re)connect to the voice and spirit very much alive inside them.
"It’s important for girls to bring things from inside to the outside because girls go through things in their lives... For me, writing and filmmaking gave me courage and helped me not be afraid to tell my story to people. I hope that each young woman is able to express her inner-self directly and indirectly, and that she can just break the world.” ~ Walaa
TOUCHING GLOBAL AUDIENCES
The first few years of workshops resulted in photographs, writing and short films that were screened first for the local community and went on to have a broader international impact through international outlets, including Sundance, Cannes, and SXSW film festivals, and media outlets such as the New York Times, NPR and The Telegraph. Our films have been used to inform institutions and organizations addressing the Syrian refugee crisis, from policy at the EU Conference on Women Refugees and Asylum Seekers and the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s series on refugees, to health and mental health initiatives at Mt. Sinai and George Washington Universities, to public arts platforms of courageous female artists addressing conflict in the International Center for Photography project Women Picturing Revolution, to numerous youth empowerment and education conferences, sponsored by institutions like the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and Columbia University.
AKGC artists continue to reach out into the world through their stories and voices, creating new media as paid reporters for news outlets, having their media acquisitioned by museums as permanent pieces of their collection, positioning themselves on the edge of new media technology by creating Virtual Reality films, being awarded scholarships to continue and complete their secondary school education, and being nominated to be leaders in promoting girls’ access to education through Malala’s Global Ambassadors Program (only 8 nominated world-wide). As they grow their roots internationally, they have also grown into young womanhood as extra-ordinary, independent, creative, passionate, and conscientious thinkers and doers.
Click here to see Marah’s video about life in Za’atari Refugee Camp for the Thomson Reuters Foundation

Thank you for supporting Another Kind of Girl Collective and becoming a part of this crucial movement ~ creating a world where every girls’ voice is heard.
With much love and gratitude,
Another Kind of Girl Collective
www.anotherkindofgirl.com
Dear Friends,These last couple of years have not been easy. The local and global news has been heartbreaking. Populations everywhere are being uprooted. It’s hard to know where or how to help in a way that’s real and can make a lasting difference. But we at AKGC are full of hope. We know that this is a critical moment in history, when women are breaking through barriers to tell their stories, and we ask ourselves, who are the girls and young women whose stories and voices aren’t being heard?
AKGC started as a local arts initiative for Syrian refugee girls in Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan, but starting this summer Another Kind of Girl Collective seeks to expand and become a global force for girls and young women to tell their stories. With this project, we intend to connect, collaborate, and co-create multimedia artworks and stories with other young women living in displaced, transitory communities around the world, one community at a time. In expanding our reach across cultures, borders and shifting localities of home, this collective of artists will put communities of girls into conversation with some of the hardest to reach populations, allow them to challenge stereotypes and assumptions, provide them with tools to expand their artistic portfolios, and connect them to resources that will enable them to share their stories more widely and become active players in shifting and shaping public opinion, policies, and cultural norms.
PROGRAMMING FOR SUMMER 2018:The young women of AKGC are ready to create a new map for Another Kind of Girl and the work begins this summer in Jordan and Peru:
1. We will DEEPEN OUR WORK WITH SYRIAN GIRLS in Jordan through a media arts workshop in Za’atari Refugee Camp for a new group of Syrian girls, mentored by the older AKGC artists. In our workshops we create with the girls a safe space for them to reflect on their stories and engage in first-person, cinematic storytelling, emphasizing curiosity and exploration alongside narrative, based on empowering their imaginative visions.
2. We will begin to EXPAND OUR COLLECTIVE through our first cross-border, collaborative project: a film created by young filmmaker-mothers in Jordan and Peru. Working with the filmmakers from an amazing media arts project initiated by artist EB Landesberg in Peru 3 years ago, four young women living in displaced communities--two indigenous Shipibo teens (Karoly and Christy) in Lima, Peru, and two Syrian teens (Khaldiya and Marah) living as refugees in Jordan-- will document their transition from childhood to motherhood, and the layers of instability they must overcome to be able to raise their children well, as they themselves come of age. Their film will bring us closer to the lived experience of young marginalized women, opening up a dialogue with other women in similar circumstances, challenging the dominant narratives of pity, victimhood, and “voicelessness”.
3. We will BROADEN OUR IMPACT as the older AKGC artists curate a traveling exhibit of their multimedia stories, existing and new, that they’ve created as they’ve come of age as refugees in Jordan. 4-5 years ago, these girls fled from Daraa, Syria, where the revolution began, between the ages of 13-16. The exhibit will invite others to experience the alchemy of how their visual impressions and diaries turned surrounding losses and foreign landscapes into new imaginative worlds, the unexpected places where they find or create beauty and humor, and the materials they draw upon to envision something beyond her immediate confines.
YOUR DONATION will make AKGC's transformative summer work in Jordan and Peru happen! We need a minimum of $8,000 by June 27th to cover all costs related to summer programming and production:
* Local transportation costs (in Jordan and Peru)
*Camper (mobile trailer) that will house and be the creative studio space for the workshops in Jordan
* Cameras and equipment (that the new Syrian girls and Peruvian girls will own)
* Stipends (for the AKGC mentors and artists, facilitators, & translator in Jordan and Peru)
* Technology for cross-border communication (phones for whatsapp & skype, computers for editing)
* Exhibit and publicity materials, transport and food for the local and traveling screening/exhibition (of their films, photos, writing, multimedia)
Donate here via GoFundMe, or if you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, please donate via our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=15914 They take a fee, but in the end it's great for everybody. Thanks again!
PLEASE SHARE OUR GOFUNDME WITH YOUR FRIENDS!
MORE ABOUT USAKGC’s roots grew from our first media arts workshop in 2014, in a netted picnic shelter inside Jordan’s Za’atari Refugee Camp, with a small group of Syrian girls, some pocket notebooks, a bag of point-and-shoot cameras, and an electric energy and insatiable desire emanating from them to express their expansive inner-world and imagination to the outside world.
AKGC invests and roots ourselves in communities for the long-run. Nearly 5 years later, we are still working in the same two communities of Syrian refugees in Jordan. Another Kind of Girl Collective was created by that same group of Syrian girls as a global arts initiative for girls and young women living in displaced, transitory communities around the world, to connect, collaborate, and co-create multimedia artworks and stories that reflect and express their inner worlds and everyday lives – how it looks, feels and sounds from the ground, at the heart of their world.
“I live in the camp, I am within the camp, and I know the camp. An outsider will miss a lot of the deeper meanings because they haven’t felt what it’s like to live here. I want to show the rest of the world that even though we live in a refugee camp, and have different lives from others, we still have dreams and ambitions. We are creative. We are strong. We are defiant. I feel it’s my responsibility not just to tell the world that truth, but to let people see it for themselves.” ~ Khaldiya
WATCH THE SYRIAN FILMS | WATCH THE PERUVIAN FILM
For AKGC girls, home is a moving target. Whether she is a Syrian girl who has fled war and is living as a refugee in a barbed wire camp, a girl who left her family in a small nomadic village in Tibet to flee political oppression, an unaccompanied Honduran girl who has fled the Central American gang warfare and violence crisis to seek tenuous refuge in the United States, or an indigenous Shipibo girl whose community was destroyed by a fire after years of uncertainty about their rights to the land, they all have had to redefine what home means to them.
These girls did not choose their circumstances, but the tools of artistic self-expression allow them to create space of their own and reframe their identities, reflect on and shape stories on their own terms, and (re)connect to the voice and spirit very much alive inside them.
"It’s important for girls to bring things from inside to the outside because girls go through things in their lives... For me, writing and filmmaking gave me courage and helped me not be afraid to tell my story to people. I hope that each young woman is able to express her inner-self directly and indirectly, and that she can just break the world.” ~ Walaa
TOUCHING GLOBAL AUDIENCES
The first few years of workshops resulted in photographs, writing and short films that were screened first for the local community and went on to have a broader international impact through international outlets, including Sundance, Cannes, and SXSW film festivals, and media outlets such as the New York Times, NPR and The Telegraph. Our films have been used to inform institutions and organizations addressing the Syrian refugee crisis, from policy at the EU Conference on Women Refugees and Asylum Seekers and the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s series on refugees, to health and mental health initiatives at Mt. Sinai and George Washington Universities, to public arts platforms of courageous female artists addressing conflict in the International Center for Photography project Women Picturing Revolution, to numerous youth empowerment and education conferences, sponsored by institutions like the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and Columbia University.
AKGC artists continue to reach out into the world through their stories and voices, creating new media as paid reporters for news outlets, having their media acquisitioned by museums as permanent pieces of their collection, positioning themselves on the edge of new media technology by creating Virtual Reality films, being awarded scholarships to continue and complete their secondary school education, and being nominated to be leaders in promoting girls’ access to education through Malala’s Global Ambassadors Program (only 8 nominated world-wide). As they grow their roots internationally, they have also grown into young womanhood as extra-ordinary, independent, creative, passionate, and conscientious thinkers and doers.
Click here to see Marah’s video about life in Za’atari Refugee Camp for the Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thank you for supporting Another Kind of Girl Collective and becoming a part of this crucial movement ~ creating a world where every girls’ voice is heard.
With much love and gratitude,
Another Kind of Girl Collective
www.anotherkindofgirl.com
Organizer
Laura Doggett
Organizer
Washington D.C., DC