The Palestinian Refugee Version Of "Humans Of New York" Will Give You All The Feels

The Humans of Al-Rashidiya project, launched late last year, was inspired by the popular American photo-blog and documents Palestinan refugees in a camp in Lebanon.

Humans of Al-Rashidiya is a photo-blog that documents Palestinian refugees living in a camp in southern Lebanon. It was launched last October and the photos are posted on its Facebook page.

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Al-Rashidiya, home to over 30,000 people, is one of 12 recognized Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the UN says. Palestinian refugees are barred from at least 20 professions in Lebanon and struggle to find good jobs.

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Many people featured in the project, inspired by the hugely popular Humans of New York, talk about leaving Palestinian territories now occupied by Israel and how they and their families are doing today.

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The younger ones, many of whom were born in the camp, talk about their daily lives and pick out their favorite foods, colors, and past-times.

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They also talk about their ambitions.

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Humans of Al RashidIya was co-founded by Mary Mitchell, a British woman who first visited the camp as a volunteer teacher in 2008, and Mohammed al-Assad, who lives in the camp and was formerly one of Mitchell's students.

"People's perceptions of poverty and refugees are challenged by this," Mitchell, who lives in London and is now doing a PhD that in part looks at how refugees use social media, told BuzzFeed News. People in the camp are often educated and have smartphones sent to them by relatives abroad, so they spend a lot of time on social media, she said.

The fact that finding jobs in Lebanon is so hard frees up even more time to gaze at Facebook, and people also rely on the site to stay in touch with relatives who have gone to other countries, often illegally and with no way of returning to visit.

Humans of Al Rashidiya has five people who live in the camp, including Assad, taking photos. The longer-term aim is to get the camp's residents to submit their own pictures. "We want to give people a chance to represent their own lives, while also being the audience," Mitchell said.

The project is also an attempt to give the Lebanese an insight into Palestinian communities to try and break down the hostility between the two groups, Assad told Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper last year.

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