FARES, 6 - #ImagineaSchool HD

Fares used to work long hours in a store selling vegetables and cleaning for the owner. His mother eventually made him stop. He is not enrolled in school so he now spends his days sitting aimlessly in his family’s house. “In the future, I’d like to become an engineer or a doctor," Fares says. "My name is Fares. And I’m three, four, five... Four. I do not know how to read or write. I only know how to draw the sky, the sea and the sun. I’ve waited tables. I served beans, corn, hummus, water pipe, poatoes, seeds. I’ve cleaned the store and sold ice cream to children. I don’t know how to fill the cone but I help Mohannad do it. I want to leave. My house is like a prison. I want to go to school." #ImagineaSchool is a multimedia project on Syrias’ children struggle for education, consisting of an interactive documentary and a photo exhibition, based on in-depth interviews with 19 Syrian children across Lebanon, addressing different challenges on their path to education. The title of the project, #ImagineaSchool, is a quote from two of the girls interviewed that had never been to school. Nearly six years into the violence, half of all Syrian children, or 2.8 million, in Syria and neighboring countries, are out of school. Some of the main obstacles are poverty, social exclusion, discrimination, insecurity, vulnerability, language barriers and lack of information. Find out more about Syrian refugee children and their struggle for education at www.imagineaschool.com Camera and editing: Hedinn Halldorsson