The shelter in Saida in which our center is located houses around 1500 people. This places us in a unique position to help an entire community. While we mainly offer academic support and skills development to children, female youth and women, there was a number of male youth our programs did not accommodate. This is why in May we started an exciting carpentry workshop in collaboration with our partner organization Green Helmets (Grünhelme e.V.) and funded by Manos Unidas to provide those youth that wanted a tailored challenge with a useful skill in carpentering! When we opened registration for the workshop, we were delighted to see a group of teenage girls and women were also interested.
With a total of 50 participants aged between 14 and 35, divided into 4 groups, the workshop took place throughout the preceding 3 months and finished this week. The goal of these workshops was not only to learn technique but also to create a piece of furniture from scratch. In addition to basic theory, the first classes focused on core techniques like planning wood and making joints and corners. Then they moved on to using hand machines. As the months went by, they progressed towards making a cupboard.
Feedback from the participants reflects that they were particularly happy with the workshops because now they can fix anything in their home that relates to wood and can borrow tools from the workshops space to do so when necessary.
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