This picture was painted by a 14 year old Gazan school girl, Tala Rasas, from Mamounia UNRWA school in Gaza city. It was given to me by the artist herself, on a visit to Gaza in January 2022. I proudly took it back to Totnes and it’s been on the wall of my flat ever since.

We’re inviting you to use Tala’s great painting as a stimulus for this year’s poetry competition. The competition is open to young people from Palestine, as well as young people who go to school in Bosnia and the UK.

At the end of the competition a panel of international poets will choose the best 20 poems from each location to go into a new Hands up book and exhibition which will tour all three countries. All the proceeeds from book sales will be shared between the Hands up Project and Remembering Srebenica, a UK charity committed to ‘Learning the lessons from the Bosnian genocide, and taking social action to help to build safer, more cohesive communities’

We’re very grateful to the National Education Union for providing us with a grant in order to run this competition and produce the forthcoming book.

At 4.30 pm UK time on 7th January 2026 we’ll be holding a zoom meeting with the judges if you’d like to come along and find out more. This will be for both teachers and students who’slike to take part. In the mean time here are the rules in full.Escola Padre Reus in Porto Alegre, Brazil is a quite remarkable state school.

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How did I transform pain into art, and rubble into a message, within the Gaza Strip?

In the heart of a city that has turned grey after two years of genocide, I chose to create color from the rubble—to revive our emotions and our city. I began by launching a series of artistic, theatrical, literary, and other creative activities with our brilliant students as part of the project.

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Escola Padre Reus in Porto Alegre, Brazil is a quite remarkable state school.

Yesterday I was invited there to give a talk to 15 -17 year olds, about the Hands up Project’s work with children in Gaza. They also have the ‘Moon tell me truth’ exhibition set up there in the school corridor for everyone to see.

I don’t think I’ve ever visited a school with such a great atmosphere between teachers and students. All the young people I spoke to were so mature, so aware of the situation in Palestine, and so committed to taking action to support the young people there in whatever way they could.

This morning, one of their teachers, Liliana, pictured in the foreground above, got in touch with me to tell me about about an activity she did today with the poems from ‘Moon tell me truth’. She encouraged her students to find one of the poems that they found particularly inspirational and then write a short text in English as a response. Below you’ll find four examples of these texts with the poems that inspired them.

What a beautifully simple idea this is. If you’re an English teacher somewhere in the world and you’d like to find ways to share the creative work of Palestinian children in engaging ways, perhaps it could work in your context?

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Nearly all the poems in ‘Moon tell me truth’ were written by children in Gaza in the Spring of 2023. Now children around the world are being inspired by these poems; inspired by the beauty of expression by children living in unimaginable conditions and inspired to create their own poetry as a result of reading them. In this blog post I’d like to share how this has happened at one of my local primary schools in Devon - Dartington Primary. It all started when the school asked me whether they could have the exhibition as a permanent feature and have myself and Peter Oswald to come to the school and do a workshop with the kids there.

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Isora Enriquez OFrarrill (left) is the Hands up Project’s voluntary coordinator in Havana, Cuba. She’s worked tirelessly to build connections between children and teachers in Cuba with their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

I actually went to Cuba to have a much needed break from it all. And I did do that in this fascinating, beautiful country. But I’m also grateful to Isora for drawing me in to strengthening our connections with schools there.

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Every Friday, educators from Gaza to Oxford, Cairo to California, gather around a virtual campfire. No agendas, no pressure—just a shared mission to uplift students through English education. This is the heartbeat of our weekly drop-in sessions.

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The Hands Up Project school in Cairo was first started by Donna Campbell, who planted the seeds of this special learning space during her time in Egypt. Her work laid a foundation of care, creativity, and connection that continues to grow.

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A Bridge of Stories, A Journey of Hearts by Manuela & Lamya Some stories begin not in the classroom, but in the quiet spaces of kindness. That’s how I met Lamya not as a fellow teacher, but as a sister in compassion. Later, we met again — this time, around a Zoom screen. Lamya was supporting her girls in a project with Haneen and the British Council. I was only there to guide them gently through a couple of rehearsals. They needed very little.

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In a Gaza school now used as a shelter, teacher Sahar is leading a powerful initiative called From Zero to Hero. Three times a week, she gathers with displaced children to learn, play, and write — creating a safe, hopeful space in the middle of hardship.

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At the Hands Up Project, link-up sessions aren’t just classes—they’re windows into worlds. Over the past weeks, our incredible volunteers and Palestinian teachers have turned screens into spaces of laughter, learning, and cross-cultural magic. Here’s a glimpse of the joy unfolding:

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Building Bridges with Words: Our Inspiring Partnership with the Hands Up Project

At Inspired Kids and Inspired CPD, we believe in the power of connection and the transformative potential of creative expression. For us, it isn’t just about learning English. That's why our partnership with the Hands Up Project has been such a rewarding journey, enriching the lives of our students in Taiwan in profound ways.

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Pilgrimage for Palestine hit London Parliament Square on a hot 30th March at 2pm. There was amazement and some tears as we paused in Hyde Park, after thirteen days of walking, talking, poetry, generous hosts, massive support, huge donations, canals, rivers, injury, iftar, mild disagreement, rapture, waking every day at 3.30am.

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’ve just returned from the National Education Union’s annual conference in Harrogate in the north of England, where the Hands up Project had a stall selling our books, showcasing our new exhibition ‘Oh big blue’, and encouraging teachers to get involved in our work.

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On April 6, 2025, I took part in Our Time to Break Silence—a public reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. The program was held at Monroe Street United Methodist Church in Toledo. I served as chair of the storytelling committee and represented The Hands Up Project.

But what moved me most was curating the art exhibition Moon, Tell Me Truth.

The exhibition featured stories, poems, and short plays created by young people in Gaza. These pieces were written during the current genocide. Some told of fear. Some of love. Many carried questions no child should have to ask. But all of them reached for something higher—hope, dignity, truth.

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