By Yasmeen El Khoudary - posted on her blog Gaza out of the Blue
It's quite surprising to see that people are quite surprised to hear that there's a book club in Gaza, but I guess that's exactly why we started Diwan Ghazza. Let me tell you our story.
A group of my friends and I are fed up with the way the world regards Gaza (with the usual media coverage on the negative side of life here) and disregards the other face: the historic, the beautiful, the educated, and the inspirational. We decided that Gaza is a city no less capable than other cities, and the fact that we have gone through so much should add to our credit. Gaza breeds thinkers, and the only thing it teaches them is that they should do the thinking themselves. There are no cultural centers, theatres, cinemas or –updated- public libraries in Gaza, but that wasn’t going to stop us.
So we decided to put our thoughts, time and energy into creating a group that we would be proud of belonging to. Its quite funny actually, that whenever people ask us what "Diwan Ghazza" is, our answer, "we're a group of friends interested in knowledge and in improving Gaza's image in the world", they don't get it. How can we not be a registered society or an NGO?! Why are we not asking for funding?! How can you not have an office!?
But Diwan Ghazza is much simpler than that. We're not willing to be subject to boring NGO or donor regulations. Why should we seek to become "officially registered" and ask for donations when we can do great work without any money?
Our first activity was the first Gaza Tweet-Up in July 2011, which gathered about 30 tweeps from Gaza, many of them meeting for the first time. We discussed everything from our role and responsibility as Gaza Tweeps to future activities by Diwan. Later, we organized an online tweet up with Frode Mauring, Special Representative of the Administrator in the occupied Palestinian territories . We also organized several meetings between youth activisits in Gaza and UNDP and other diplomats, including a diplomatic and cultural mission from Sweden. more
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