Transitions in Za’atari camp

I’ve only worked with JEN for a few weeks but I’ve been working in Za’atari camp for the past 10 months.  It’s a very interesting time to be here.   There is the sense of a very rapid shift as the camp transitions from an emergency place of shelter to a place where Syrian refugees are restarting their lives.  You can see changes on almost a daily basis as refugees make the shelters more and more substantial and comfortable.  Despite all the progress there are still a lot of challenges and discomforts to overcome here.

I’m enjoying learning the JEN way of working to help address challenges- by building capacity and systems in the camp population so that refugees can identify and resolve their own issues in this shifting environment. There is a lot of collaboration on JEN teams at all levels and I’m really enjoying that too, because it makes us all feel connected to the work we do.

On example of how we build capacity is by engaging community members in the spread of information. We’ve switched from delivering hygiene promotion sessions ourselves to training hygiene promoters from the community to deliver messages to their neighbors.

Amaal, one of our skilled team leaders in Zaatari Camp, who has an academic background in health, identified 39 Syrian refugees in the community who are willing to deliver hygiene messages to the community on a voluntary basis.   For their first mission, we asked the community hygiene promoters to spread information about food safety in their community.
I got to watch Amaal train a few of the community hygiene promoters on the food safety message. It was a lot of fun!  Amaal is normally quiet and shy but she was quite animated and her eyes were sparkling when she delivered the training session.   Lively discussions started periodically during the training sessions as the Community Hygiene Promoters encountered information they were unfamiliar with or when they had a related story to share.

In closing the sessions I was curious why these women volunteered to help deliver messages in their communities.  So, after I expressed my gratitude for their willingness to work with us, I asked.  One fiery lady said she likes to work with people and help them.  Another who had been a nurse knows the messages can be important for her neighbors and she wants to use her background to help everyone stay healthy.

In the past few weeks I’ve also gotten to see how JEN is improving infrastructure in the camp.  For example by replacing sewage pipe that were frequently blocked because they weren’t at the proper slope from the public toilets to the septic tank.  This was a fairly major undertaking as it involved digging out the pipe and adjusting its placement below ground.   The community members who live nearby were around to watch the work and understand the changes.  All agreed it was a necessary improvement.

[Replacing the sewage pipe between public WASH facilities.]


Another exciting thing I’ve been able to do was conduct a brainstorming session with the JEN staff in the camp.  We want our future programming to focus on the more vulnerable refugees who don’t normally get to participate in our activities one reason or another. During the session we talked about reasons people can’t always participate in camp programs. Then we started to develop the criteria we would use to identify these people so we can actively try to engage them in the future.  In addition to getting a lot done we all had fun!

[Introduction to brainstorming session on vulnerability in Za’atari Camp.]

Anne Rapin, Program officer

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