The Ibdaa Cultural Center was introduced to the Martín-Baró Fund by Grassroots International, the Boston-based partner of the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Dheisheh is one of the 59 Palestinian Refugee Camps established as a result of the creation of the state of Israel and is now home to 11,000 people, 50% of whom are under the age of fifteen. Dheisheh residents face multiple hardships including squalid living conditions, 70% unemployment, displacement from the land, and a generation of young people with extremely limited hope for the future, not to mention continuing political conflict with Israel and now, on occasion, the Palestinian Authority.

The Cultural Center is a thoroughly indigenous project designed to provide youth with opportunities for education, cultural and historical reconnections, computer access and literacy, the discovery of more egalitarian gender relations, and links to youth both in other camps and internationally. These activities are designed to develop new leadership for the entire community and a renewed sense among young people that the future can, with their efforts, be more hopeful than it has been in the past. The Center, in other words, seeks to reclaim a generation of youth who have known little but despair, fighting, and the loss of both the past and the future. The Martín-Baró Fund grant will support the development of an oral history project designed to reconnect participants with the authentic histories of their families and community as an essential condition for positive mental health and the confidence to work for a just future.