In November and December 2022 we took The Ball with us to the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, where we shared a six-day workshop in teamwork, fairplay, textile art and upcycling innovation with our participants. The Ball joined us in playing fairplay football, teambonding and inclusion exercises, when painting on tote bags and shirts and when documenting upcycling innovations.
Learning about upcycling from people in the Azraq camp
Luckily we were able to visit some homes in the camp this year, and were able to document great sustainable inventions from the camp inhabitants. They have only little material and resources and still manage to invent great tools and create art pieces from it. The innovations range from art works and toys to carts for carrying water, a self made air conditioner and an upcycled gas heater. Hydrophonic gardening is used to have small gradens and grow vegetables without needing soil. Different ways are found to reuse and thereby save water. Click through the gallery below to learn about the upcycling innovations in the Azraq refugee camp. As we learned through our tour through the shelter homes: Necessity is the mother of invention.
Nabiha, one of our participants, shows the air conditioning system her brother built in her living room, which works as follows: in summer, damp cloths are hung on the outside of the fan, which cool the air (up to 35°C) that is drawn into the room. However, in the part of the camp where Nabiha lives, there has been no electricity for weeks and the fan cannot be operated. Due to cuts in funding in the camp, there will be even less power supply in the near future.
Arif is a very talented craftsman. He has built a seesaw for his little daughter using some of the few materials that can be found in the camp. He also converted a broken oven into a gas heater – upcycling and innovation at its best.
Aqil built this cart to help his neighbours carry gallons of water. Some places, like the community centres, have running water, but most people have to transport gallons of water from a well to their shelters. Aqil is deaf and communicates mostly with hand gestures. Some neighbours learned sign language to communicate with him.
Nuha is 17 and made this emergency electricity circuit within a project in the camp. The necessary battery, which you can see in the corner above the green paint, was donated by an NGO. When the electricity is cut, Nuha and her family, friends and neighbours can use this small emergency generator to charge the phones or use the light to study.
This medicine cabinet, made by a young woman, can only be accessed with a pass code, so that children, for instance, don’t take something from the cabinet. Unfortunately, the cabinet only works with electricity, which is often out in the camp.
Muhammad makes toys and pieces of art from cardboard. This bus resembles a school bus from Syria and harks back to another life before the war came and destroyed so much.
In the community centres, as well as in many of the gardens of the shelter, you can find hydroponic gardening. Here seeds are put in water with added nutrients to grow vegetables. This way no soil is needed.
From the outside we see just basic huts made of zinc and steel, but they hide a multitude of small dream gardens, hidden between the many accommodations. Mahmud shows us the fountain his cousin built, that reuses washing water. The tomatoes next to the fountain are an example of how residents use every inch of space to grow small amounts of vegetables to feed their families.
