For a 12-year-old boy in a Lebanese refugee camp, learning about photography ended his isolation, and inspired him to get funding for a school there

So much of being a child can feel like sitting around, waiting around for your life to start. For Mohamad Al Jounde, now 16, the problem was chronic – forced to flee from his home country, out of school, no money, nowhere to go, nothing to do. When he picked up a camera for the first time in a refugee camp in Lebanon, it started a chain of events that ended with him opening a school in a camp when he was 12, and culminated with Malala Yousafzai presenting him with an award. Life comes at you fast.

Mohamad left the city of Hama, in Syria, two years ago after the regime abducted his mother twice for her activism and threatened to kill her. The family ended up in Aley, near Beirut in Lebanon, safe but destitute. They had no money to send Mohamad and his sister to school, and time ebbed past without purpose.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mohammed says that he doesn’t take ‘portraits’, he takes pictures. Photograph: Mohamad Al Jounde

The world started to look more interesting when a photographer took Mohamad under his wing. “My dad took me to see a photographer called Ramzi Haidar. He started teaching me photography, and he’s my favourite photographer,” Mohamad says. “It was the first time I’d held a camera.

“I didn’t go for school for two years, but when I started learning photography it ended the emptiness in my life – it helped me express myself and show people how I live.”

He takes photographs of people but not portraits. “I like going to camps and the streets and protests and taking photographs of people, mostly,” he says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Walking around, taking photos in the city and the camp, gave Mohamad a fresh perspective on his situation. Photograph: Mohamad Al Jounde

Mohamad’s father is a visual artist and his mother a maths teacher. “They are both politically aware, and they told me how important education is for the future of Syria,” he says. He started teaching photography to children in the camps. As of October 2017, Unicef says, there are 1.7 million children out of school in Syria – and even recently enrolled children are at severe risk from dropping out as they’ve missed out on so much already. Education felt vital for Mohamad, but not for all the obvious reasons.

“I didn’t manage my trauma well, but after I started working in camps with children I knew that there are people who have harder lives,” he says, “so I stopped thinking about my situation but at the same time the other children started to dream and smile and live their childhoods. So I started thinking there are two options: either I’m weak or I can think positively. I started to think I could make my life better than it was in Syria and I can make myself a better person – the kids really wanted an education, and they also helped me get over my trauma.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mohamad became aware that the children he was photographing were desperate to get back to education. Photograph: Mohamad Al Jounde

Taking photographs had a profound effect on the children Mohamad was teaching. “The kids from Syria in the camps don’t like to talk and don’t know how to express themselves or tell us about what they’ve been through,” he says. “Photography helps them show us where they live and how they live in more detail – and there are children who only take pictures of people they really trust.” If they showed Mohamad pictures of a particular person, they would get in touch with them and consult with them about the child’s welfare, making sure both adult and child were getting proper support.

Mohamad’s own lack of formal education made him realise how sorely the children in the camp missed going to school. Not just so they could learn, but also so they could hang out together, exchange ideas and have their own community. He wanted to open a school in the Bekaa Valley refugee camp, but knowing no adult would take a 12-year-old seriously, he outlined his ideas in a proposal and got his family to refine it and his mother to put her name on it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The school for which Mohamad got funding now has more than 200 pupils. Photograph: Mohamad Al Jounde

NGO funding was approved, and the school doors opened in the summer of 2014. They started with more than 100 students, managed by just four teachers. Today, the school has some 200 pupils, some as young five, and also teaches adult literacy and – of course – photography.

Were people surprised when they realised Mohamad was the school’s driving force? “Yeah. They were,” he says. “Now they take me seriously.”

That was made abundantly clear when, in December, he was awarded the International Children’s Peace prize – an award set up by KidsRights Foundation – and handed the trophy by Malala Yousafzai.

I escaped war in Syria and am now free to dream – but other kids aren't so lucky | Bilal Rwaeh Read more

Mohamad has recently been granted asylum in Sweden, but is concerned about the future of the Bekaa school as funding is unclear and he doesn’t want it to become NGO-ified. “We don’t want to get funds from just anyone because we want it to be a home not a project,” he says.

Being a refugee has meant that Mohamad has had to take charge in order to have the kind of life he wants. Friends are hard to keep, because the Syrian refugee diaspora moves around so much, so that even the basics aren’t guaranteed.

And now Mohamad has to start a new life in Sweden. But it doesn’t look like he will be sitting around, waiting for things to start happening around him.