Water Remembers—And So Do We
I never imagined water could hold memory until young people across Lebanon, Tunisia, and Indigenous Canada began teaching me. Not through statistics or policy, but through art, silence, and reclaimed stories.
I’m a youth peacebuilder and climate justice storyteller from Lebanon. I work at the intersection of narrative change, water justice, and youth agency. I’ve seen how our region, often framed as broken or dangerous becomes a site of resistance when youth reclaim their power. Through collaborative projects like Voices Beneath the Surface and Deconstructing the Lebanese Imprint, we are refusing the narrative that we are too young, too unstable, too traumatized to lead.
Centering Youth Power Through Story and Memory
In 2021, along with Waterlution Canada, I co-led Voices Beneath the Surface, a cross-regional storytelling journey which connected youth from Lebanon, and communities in Canada. It addressed the water pollution of the Litani river and over a series of participatory workshops we considered water as not only a resource, but as a relative, a witness, and a resister.
Our stories were not straightforward. They contained the messiness of trauma, joy, humor and spiritual memory. One participant talked about how the river felt like her only friend when her village had dry wells. Another described water as a language he never learned to speak, as his family had been displaced because of lack of access to clean water.
These were not mere reflections, they were acts of resistance. Youth were not merely telling stories to be heard from an audience. We were telling stories to heal, to organize, and to generate counter narratives. The project finished with a digital storytelling exhibition and allowed the story to be adapted for educational purposes within youth-led climate summits.
Resisting Invisibility and Tokenism
Later on, in 2023, I co-created Deconstructing the Lebanese Imprint, an art installation and community dialogue space for discussing identity, rupture and rebirth after a crisis. Deconstructing the Lebanese Imprint was held at Galerie Janine Rubeiz in Beirut, and was a space for young artists, displaced youth and community leaders to explore identity. Deconstructing the Lebanese Imprint was more than about visibility, it provided a space to re-write who we are in our own terms. So, what is the distinction between these projects? We did not come in with policy briefs. We came in with lived experiences. We did not treat our youth like assistants or interns, we treated them like curators, designers, and decision-makers. We held the terms; we did not wait to be consulted. We are were making new tables.
Intersectionality Is Our Foundation
For us, the idea of "youth power" isn't abstract, a concept to beat on paper, or packaged in a message of solidarity. The impetus behind youth power has, and will always be shaped by class, gender, colonial borders, and inherited trauma. Our teams had youth from all backgrounds, cultures and countries. Who we are was not an add-on, it is why we succeeded.
In Lebanon, I worked with SDSN Youth, leading climate simulations for students from under-resourced public schools. Many had never been asked to participate in a climate space. When they stepped into that space, they didn't just "take part" in it; they were imagining a whole new form of national climate policy.
At the AMEL Institute, I was a mentor for young peacebuilders on narrative sovereignty: how to know when our stories were being used as tools by others, and how to take back the story.
Our Call to Action
Youth engagement is often performative; we are acknowledged in speeches but left out of budgets and the decision-making process…no more!
Our request is this:
Don't just "empower" youth - give youth the actual power
Fund us. Trust us. Work with us.
Not later - now.
We are already organizing, we are already storytelling, we are already negotiating. What we don't need is validation - we need equity, access, and shared decision-making power.