Northern Aleppo – North-Press Agency
Dejla Khalil
This month, a group of displaced people from the Afrin regions in the northern Aleppo countryside, in northern Syria, continue to broadcast a diverse program called "The Art of Life" on the social networking site Facebook to provide social, cultural, artistic, recreational, and medical topics to the population in light of the lockdown period.
The first episode of the program began broadcasting on April 6, reaching six episodes so far, and the number of its followers has reached about 10,000 on Facebook, where the program is broadcast.
The program has a special presenter and three children who prepare a promotion for each episode with the help of their father to introduce the topic of the program, which is varied according to the episode. The guests include doctors, intellectuals, artists, and musicians.
Massoud Karrad, a director and cameraman as well as an IDP from Afrin who lives in the northern countryside of Aleppo, said that he initiated the program in order for people to benefit from the topics raised in the episodes during the lockdown period.
Karrad pointed out the spread of many programs on social media, but these were often without goals and far from societal habits.
He explained that the organizers of the program are distributed in different regions in the northern countryside of Aleppo, the city of Aleppo, and outside Syria, "We distribute work among us in preparing the text of the program and coordinating with the guests, and photographing a promotion for each episode presented by the children," he said.
In addition, two people are hosted in each episode, for a period of more than an hour, to answer questions asked by participants and broadcasters that are related to the topic of the episode.
Mezgin Abdo, one of the followers of the Art of Life program, said that the program is diversified and new, and that she liked the introduction and the variety of the guests, because the program contains information and entertainment during the lockdown period, noting that she was both entertained and informed by the program.
For his part, the presenter of the program, Renas Khemgin, pointed out that they have adopted live broadcast on Facebook because the internet has become more available to all Afrin IDPs than television.
Khemgin added that the interaction of people and positive opinions about the program prompted them to continue working, saying: "Through the program, we can keep followers in their homes during the period of the program's presentation," which he described as a good achievement.
The child Aria Karrad, who works with two of her sisters to promote the "Art of Life" program, said, "Because of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus and the imposition of the lockdown in the area, as well as the interruption of our school, I like to participate in the program with my sisters," noting that she also has a fun time presenting the promotional paragraph.