Action for Hope (AFH) is a pioneering organization that offers innovative models for civil society work on the cross line between cultural rights, artistic creativity and social change.
Founded in 2015 to the backdrop of the crack down on the Arab Spring in the MENA region, AFH had a vision of a just and tolerant world, where communities risking social fragmentation because of war, displacement, and extreme poverty use creativity to face and surmount their difficult circumstances. It based its programs on the simple belief that artists, writers, cultural activists, and social workers could address essential needs that are missing from traditional humanitarian relief efforts, by doing what they know best: supporting the basic human need for creative expression and sharing stories, providing a safe zone for self-expression, and encouraging the building of shared affinities and support networks.
AFH believes that communities in distress, be it those living in poverty in informal urban settlements in Egypt, or Syrian refugees displaced into informal camps in Lebanon, need more than food and shelter to regain a sense of dignity, agency and power of community, they need access to culture and creative expression. AFH has designed relief and development programs that meet the cultural, social and psychological needs of the communities it services, creatively combining access to artistic expression with education and health services. AHF has developed art education programs that equip young people from these communities with the artistic tools to tell their own stories, in their own voice and share them with their own communities, as well as with wider communities, some of whom are oblivious to the injustices they are experiencing. Rooted in the environments of the distressed communities they service, AFH programs always start by building one-on-one relationships with the families of these communities.
The Mimeta supported AFH film school has been developed in the heart of a refugee camp in the Lebanese Biqaa, on the Western boarders of Syria. Since its established in 2017, the film school has graduated 67 graduates, six of them have received scholarships to pursue higher education in film, while 50 have entered into the professional film sector. The films produced by the school students are starting to win awards at accredited film festivals and have had 34 thousand views on social media. The camp is also home to a mobile stage that AFH have established to host performances by established artists from the buzzing Beirut art scene, in Biqaa.
Mimeta also supports AFH Fa’el program (Meaning: one who takes the initiative), that provides cultural management training to aspiring leaders from across the Arab region, sharing with them the knowledge and experience AFH has gained in providing cultural relief to distressed communities. The models for cultural relief that AFH has developed in Lebanon and Jordan, have prompted UNESCO to partner with it on cultural rehabilitation projections in the ancient Iraqi city of Mosul, destroyed after Iraqi government and allied forces raids between 2014-2017? described as the world’s largest single military operation since the war on Iraq in 2003. Working with local partners like the Book Forum, AFH Mosul programs are exemplary in demonstrating the need for cultural rebuilding, along with rebuilding on stones, in post conflict contexts.
Finally, Mimeta supports AFH efforts to extend its advocacy for cultural rights globally, by developing Landscapes of Hope (LoH), a network of 25 civil society organizations, from 16 mostly global south countries, that work together across sectorial divides to bring about effective social change in situations of distress. The network’s Requiem for Justice is an annual international rally of artists and writers that manifests the power of the arts to protect injustices, reflect current realities and imagine a better future.
