CultureWays is proud to be involved in ANAOBABA TV, a meaningful and necessary project that aims at reducing the gap between refugees and asylum-seekers and their families back home.
ANAOBABA TV – which is Arabic for “Me and Dad TV” – will use a video sharing app that allows refugees and asylum-seeking fathers to keep in touch with their children and share with them their daily lives in Denmark. This will, on one hand, serve as a pedagogical facilitator for the fathers’ integration process in the country by putting them in charge of their own integration while awaiting family reunification while, on the other hand, it will also facilitate the integration process of their families, by giving them a glimpse, from their personal perspective, of the Danish lifestyle. Perhaps more important, ANAOBABA TV will help fathers continue to be fathers, regardless of geographical borders; migration – and, in this case, forced migration – breaks relationships and families apart, and with longer waiting periods for family reunification, things tend to aggravate.
“Getting to Denmark is not the end of the journey. Fathers need to be fathers, even if they are away. We hope to give them back that responsibility by helping them keep up their motivation” – Abdullah Alsmaeel
The project was created by Abdullah Alsmaeel and Abdulghafar Kaabour, two Syrian fathers and refugees who have moved to Denmark in early 2015. With the support from the local NGO Sager der Samler and the guidance from Paul Natorp, the project leaders aim at implementing
the project first at a local level, in Aarhus, and then expand it to the whole country and eventually take it to the international sphere.
ANAOBABA TV is currently being developed with support from Aarhus Universitetshospital’s App Lab and in collaboration with Dansk Flygtningehjælp. A first testing phase has been taking place, and the pilot-project is expected to be launched later this year in July with refugee fathers from different countries working together to create videos about their lives in the country, Denmark’s culture and societal organization.
By working together with Danish volunteers, these fathers can also expand their network which will both help their and their families’ integration in the country before and after the reunification process, and strengthen the ties between the local Danish community and refugees by facilitating a much needed cultural exchange.
ANAOBABA TV is currently in talks with different potential partners who share the same values as the project and its leaders. CultureWays is proud to be one of these partners, as Nadia Mansour will act as a mediator and offer her consultancy services, filling the often inevitable cultural and linguistic gap between participants, organizers, and other partners. We believe that this is a meaningful and timely project that will certainly help to build bridges between refugees, their families, and Danish society, much necessary under Europe’s current xenophobic climate.
We will keep you updated on our website and social media channels and meanwhile, make sure to check the project’s page by clicking here.