Just.Childhood

May 15 is Nakba Day — يوم النكبة — the day Palestinians around the world mark the catastrophe of 1948, when more than 750,000 people were expelled from their homes and villages to make way for the establishment of the State of Israel. Over 530 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed. Families were torn from their land, their olive trees, their lives. Those who fled — or were driven out — were never allowed to return.

At Bait al-Shams, many of our children are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who lived through exactly this. They were born in Sabra and Shatila, a refugee camp that is itself a testament to a wound that has never fully healed.

As every year, we gathered — Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Sudanese children, side by side — to hold this day together, the way we believe children best hold big and heavy things: through story, through song, through the hands and the heart. We listened to tales of the old villages. We heard the names of places that no longer exist except in memory. We sang. We made things with our hands that connected to the richness of Palestinian culture and heritage.

Because memory is not only for adults. Children, too, deserve to know where they come from — not to carry a burden, but to understand who they are. And when Palestinian children sit alongside children who have also known displacement and loss, something quietly profound happens. They recognise each other.

The right of return — the right of Palestinian refugees to go back to their homeland — remains one of the longest unresolved injustices of our time, enshrined in international law and denied in practice for 77 years. At Just.Childhood, we cannot resolve this. But we can make sure that, even here, in a camp in Beirut, the children know their story — and know it with dignity.

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For the second time, we are running Module 2 of our Waldorf Early Childhood Teacher Training — and this round is special: educators who missed the first cycle now have the chance to join and complete the full three-year certification alongside their colleagues.

Six days dedicated to understanding the young child. What does it mean to walk, to talk, to think for the first time? What does a child between three and seven actually need — and what happens when we truly make space for imagination and self-directed play?

Led by Jill Taplin and .naju , and supported by IASWECE, participants explore these questions through theory, practice, and their own hands: singing together to build confidence in the voice, and crafting a simple cushion doll — the kind of unhurried, meaningful making that we ask children to do every day, and that educators need to experience themselves first.

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🍓 Spring came a little late to Bait al-Shams this year — but it came.

After weeks of disruption and uncertainty, we cautiously found our way back to the familiar rhythm of our days: the morning circle, the songs, the smell of beeswax and wood.

And then — strawberries.

Mothers and children gathered in the kitchen together, sorting fruit, stirring pots, filling jars with the deep red of a season we had almost missed. There is something quietly powerful about making jam: it asks for patience, for presence, for hands working side by side.

The next morning, we held our spring festival. A little belated, yes — but perhaps all the more felt for it.

Spring does not ask whether the timing is right. It simply arrives. And so did we. 🌸

Kindernothilfe E.V. Taawon Lebanon مؤسسة التعاون - لبنان Amna - formerly Refugee Trauma Initiative