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September - 2008
Mrs. Farraj said that the activities of the Congress were carried out in two phases: the first phase included the consultants and the second phase included the spokespersons and the workshops, where the participants highlighted the importance of media to achieve peace and justice in the world. She also added that the participants focused on the success of the Congress and the achievement of the goal of the Congress into four major issues: the first issue was “the rights and the freedom of media” and TAM participated in the first phase as a consultant, the second issue was “gender in media” and TAM participated fully in the groups of the workshops and in the planning where TAM presented its experience and expertise in this domain and contributed to the development of proposals, strategies and new action plans to raise the awareness to gender issues in communities, and Egypt also participated in this issue, and the third issue was “communication and poverty” and the participation of the institutions and personalities of the Middle East in this issue was limited to attending seminars, debates, lectures and public discussions. Mrs. Farraj also said that in the fourth issue entitled “Communication and Peace”, Tamara Kharroub participated from Palestine as the representative of the Bethlehem Media Center in the “International Center of Bethlehem” (Dar An-Nadwa), and representatives from Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon also participated in the phase of workshops and the planning.
June - 2008
May - 2008 The NGO Women Media & Development - TAM in Palestine, represented by its Executive Director “Suheir Farraj” participated in the establishment of the “Arab Media Women Network”, which aims at combating violence against women and encouraging good governance. It was called “A Loudspeaker for Silence”, and it is an entrance to the Internet sites. It is composed of media women and journalists from Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Chad, Ivory Coast and Spain. The network will publish its themes in Arabic, English and French. The establishment of this network was a result of the workshop organized by the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies of Granada under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism and Trade in Spain, in collaboration with the University of Granada, the University Malaga, the Andalusian Institute for Women, the Chancellery for Justice and the Public Administration in the Government of Andalusia District during the period between the 19th of May and the 12th of June 2008. Mrs. Farraj also reported in two meetings with the media women. In the first meeting she spoke about gender in media and the mechanisms that the institution of TAM uses in this issue. In the second meeting she talked about the image of women in the media and ways to change this image.
March 2008 Suheir Farraj participated in “Radio Intifada this week” which is based in Los Angelos, representing Women Media & Development “TAM” in a live show on the phone, discussing Women’s Rights and national liberation, and an explanation about TAM and its goals and programs. The show lasted approximately for twenty minutes.
February – 2008 The NGO “Women, Media & Development – TAM” participated in the Conference on “Youth in the Arab Countries”, which was held in Amman from the 8th to the 12th of February 2008. Rana Handal represented TAM in the conference, which was organized by the Arab Media Women Center (AWMC) and entitled "Media for Non-Media Youth" under the patronage of the president of the Center Mrs. Mahassen Al-Imam and under the auspices of Her Excellency Dr. Nancy Bakir - Minister of Culture. The conference aims at informing the Arab youths by introducing to them models of Arab youths. Thirty young men and young women, from Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria, participated in the conference, where each group presented a document on Arab youth, in their respective countries, entitled "The Reality of the Aspirations, Hopes and Challenges of the Future". The local media was present to follow-up and cover the activities of the conference.
December – 2007 Mrs. Linda Jarayseh, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the NGO Women Media & Development – TAM, participated in a conference on “violence against women”, which has been organized by the Ministry of Women's Affairs in the city of Ramallah. Many of the women's institutions participated in the conference, where some of the documents presented in the conference were on violence against women especially in the Palestinian society. The conference discussed some of the issues that lead to violence in the society, such as the inconsistency in family education, and the inconsistency in the Palestinian curriculum, and some social laws against women that are still applied since the time of the Turkish occupation until now, although some of these laws have changed even in Jordan itself, but it is still applicable in the West Bank. The Conference also discussed the role of the Legislative Council and how to achieve appropriate solutions to protect the individual and women from violence in general.
2007 Peru – The 4th of December On the occasion of the day against Violence against women, TAM participated in a big festival in Lima, the capital of Peru. The director of the institution of TAM – Women Media & Development, Mrs. Suheir Farraj participated in a debate during the festival where she demonstrated the situation of the Palestinian people under the Israeli occupation since they suffer from successive attacks and lack of freedom and all kind of persecution. We must mention here that this festival in organized annually by the cooperation of the union “Jakab” which is a framework that includes the several institutions of the civil society from all over Latin America and its aim is to fight against poverty and to achieve equality and justice. Each participating country contributed to the festival by broadcasting films about the situation in their counties related to violence against women and the measures that must be done to fight against these phenomena. Also, the festival included many exhibitions for women’s traditional handicrafts and art crafts. It also included popular dances and picture galleries. Another activity was the participation of TAM in a picture gallery which was held at a university in the capital Lima. This photo gallery included many photos and pictures made by women demonstrating their dreams and aspirations and among these women the Palestinian women.
Barcelona – the 25th of November 2007
December 2006 in Switzerland
December 2006 in Jordan
November 2006 In Spain
November 2006 in Egypt The activity goal was to encourage gender media watch nationally and regionally, create an alternative media vision that is supportive to gender equality in collaboration with media professionals in different domains and to form a network of Arab organizations that work on monitoring women’s image in media.
September 2006 in France
15-22nd august 2006 in Ramallah February- March 2006 in Bethlehem
February 2006 Youth Conference in Jordan
2005 2005-2006 Project management workshops in Ramallah
November 2005 Hebron
Summer 2005 in Bethlehem
2004 June 2004 in Jordan |
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A delegation from the NGO Women Media & Development - TAM in Palestine participated in the International Congress, which was held in the province of Cape Town in South Africa, and entitled “Communication is Peace”.
the black communities where they were isolated at the time of the apartheid regime and the participants met, in the Protestant church, with a number of activists in the community and heard their testimonies about the impact of the apartheid regime and how they are now working together to meet the challenges in the new South Africa, the most important of which is poverty, unemployment, high crime rate, and AIDS. They also met with one of the women infected with the disease of AIDS, who spoke about how she manages, with the assistance of the priest and the local community, to deal with the conditions that she experiences because of this disease. This was followed by a visit to the top-security prison, which is the most isolated prison and the place where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life as prisoner. It is located on the island called “Rowen Aizeland”, where the participants (men and women) listened to a detailed explanation, from former detainees, about the prison and the policy of the Apartheid regime towards them at the time of their detention. They work now as guides in the prison surrounded from all sides by the cold ocean water full of sharks. Mrs. Farraj mentioned that during the activities of the Congress many documentary films were screened, discussed and highlighted. Among these documentary films was the film entitled "bad Arabs", which is one of the most important films that discuss how to present the stereotype image of Arabs in the Hollywood films, which always presents the Arabs and the Palestinians as narrow-minded, terrorists and murderers. The participants paid tribute to those who worked on the production this film, which calls for changing the stereotype image of Arabs in the American media and the international media in general. The film also calls for highlighting the true and humanitarian image of the Arabs, and highlighting that they suffer from injustice and persecution. The film also warns of the impact of such films on the thinking of the Western people toward Arabs as it may nurture hostility against them without the real knowledge of their nature as human beings. The participants also recommended the conferees to focus on the production of films that highlight the real image of the Arab people.
The NGO Women Media & Development - TAM in Palestine, represented by thePresident of its Board of Directors “Dr. Raja’ Nafe’a Surghuli”, and its Executive Director the Palestinian woman film director “Suheir Farraj”, participated in the second meeting of the Arab network for monitoring and changing the image of women and men in the media, which was held at the Flamengo Hotel in Cairo. The meeting was organized by the NGO “Appropriate Communication Techniques for Development” (ACT) and funded by the HEINRICH BÖLL FOUNDATION - Germany, during the period between the 4th of June and up to the 26th of June 2008, where the goals and the vision of the network were revised, and the achievements of the institutions represented in the network from various Arab countries were displayed. In addition to that, there was a presentation of the experiences of monitoring by the various Arab monitoring organizations, followed by the training in monitoring and its mechanisms. The Egyptian TV Serial (A Court Case of Public Opinion) was taken as an example of the monitoring process during the training. Along with the NGO Women Media & Development - TAM from Palestine, the Faculty of Media and Journalism at BirZeit University participated in the meeting, represented by its chairman “Dr. Abdel Nasser An-Najjar”, as well as “The Media Forum” to support women's issues represented by the journalist “Anees Sweidan” and “The Jerusalem Educational Television”.