Nearly 200,000 Gaza children take part in UNRWA 'Summer Fun Weeks'

The events will involve 115 UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip

186,000 children have registered to participate in a month-long programme of summer activities organised by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The ‘Summer Fun Weeks’ (SFWs) began on 08 July and culminate in a series of closing ceremonies that end on 5 August 2017.

According to the Director of the Summer Fun Weeks, Yousef Moussa, the event is well-balanced in terms of the gender of the participants:

50.3 per cent of participants will be girls and 49.7 will be boys. There will be football for the boys and basketball for the girls. We have also included mural painting and handicrafts, as well as bouncy castles and trampolines for the younger children.

The SFW events will involve 115 UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip, including the Al-Nour Centre for the Visually Impaired in Gaza City and seven community-based rehabilitation centres. UNRWA has also devised area-specific activities such as ‘Rethink and Recycle’ in Rafah, the ‘Expo Tech’ exhibition in Khan Younis, and the ‘Equity and Equality’ initiative in the north.

New activities include the Student Ambassador programme, Students Camp and the UNRWA School Choir. The Summer Fun Weeks will culminate in the final week with the Gaza Champion’s League: a football competition for boys and a basketball tournament for girls.

Gazan children seen at the opening ceremony of the 2017 ‘Summer Fun Weeks’ programme by the UNRWA [Mohammed Asad / Middle East Monitor]

Gazan children seen at the opening ceremony of the 2017 ‘Summer Fun Weeks’ programme by UNRWA [Mohammed Asad / Middle East Monitor]

Gazan children seen at the opening ceremony of the 2017 ‘Summer Fun Weeks’ programme by the UNRWA [Mohammed Asad / Middle East Monitor]

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.