Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts

The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts (ARCPA), commonly known as AL-JANA, was established in 1990 as a local non-governmental organization registered in Beirut, Lebanon. ARCPA works with marginalized communities in Lebanon through documenting their enriching experiences and creative contributions and building on them, while at the same time enhancing the capacity of children and youth towards conflict transformation, active learning, and creative expression. Furthermore, the organization specializes in producing educational and cultural resources based on community experiences and creative contributions. Its programs vary to include interventions focusing on community development and social inclusion, conflict transformation, resource mobilization, and active memory.

Vision, Mission, and Activities

ARCPA envisions marginalized communities empowered by their ability to overcome adversity and cultivate richer societies. ARCPA is formed of a group of community activists and artists who focus on utilizing non-traditional techniques to empower marginalized communities, including children, youth, women, community activists and artists as well as NGOs to build on their strengths as active agents of change. Currently, ARCPA works on various programs, which include:

• Resource mobilization is a focused research multi-media facility and a community library open to community and cultural activists,
• Community Development and Social Inclusion geared towards developing a proper, pro-active and interactive learning and creative expression environment for children and youth-at-risk
• organizational development
• staff capacity building
• networking projects for grassroots community organizations
• Active-Memory helping to reconstruct a Palestinian people’s history and engage young Palestinians in learning from, and building on the strengths of their community. 

Cooperation with forumZFD Lebanon

forumZFD’s partnership with AL-JANA is within the Capacity Development Programme. Since 2014 forumZFD supports workshops during the annual summer encounter Janana. The summer encounter builds the capacities and networks of facilitators and NGO workers in Lebanon. During the summer encounter forumZFD tries to raise awareness and build capacities for conflict transformation and strengthen networks within the Lebanese civil society. The partnership has grown into various collaborative initiatives and projects. During the summer encounters, forumZFD has provided several workshops to the participants on various topics, including nonviolent communication, the "Memory of War" toolkit, and the “Eye Not for An Eye” toolkit. Finally, a collaborative project funded by ZIVIK-IFA on supporting and developing a trainers’ pool started in 2017 and has ended in early 2020. Trainees in conflict transformation attended a series of trainings and later received support to implement their own initiatives to practice conflict transformation work in their communities.