In Beirut, refugee girls and women learn more than self-defense in martial arts class

A two-month Brazilian jiu jitsu course in a makeshift gym in a refugee camp teaches girls and women leverage and self-defense skills while also reshaping behavior in public spaces. The coach frames the training as women’s empowerment and emphasizes changing how participants move, notice their surroundings, keep their heads up, and make eye contact. Students report improvements after weeks, including mental health benefits and greater confidence. The program encourages using voices for help, even when upbringing taught girls to stay quiet. Participants come from Palestinian refugee families affected by displacement and ongoing economic and social hardship. The coach is presented as a role model shaped by poverty and bullying, reinforcing resilience and personal growth.

"“For me it's important to call it women's empowerment in public spaces, ” she says. “After two weeks I felt I was changing - not just in sports but my mental health and everything,” says Aisha Saqqa, 18, and a first-year business management student in college. “Mirella told us to act differently.” That includes noticing their surroundings in public instead of striving to not be noticed, keeping their heads up and making eye contact. It also includes using their voices, a challenge for some girls raised to be quiet."

"“I had a lady in the program, she actually tried to scream and to scream for help and she couldn't - her voice wouldn't go out,” Atallah says. Saqqa, who wants to start a perfume business, wears a pale pink hijab covering her hair and a loose green shirt, and plans to start a perfume business after college. She speaks passionately about wanting to improve herself, to join every club she can and to become skilled at public speaking."

"Everyone in the room is overcoming adversity - starting with being born in one of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps to families who fled or were forced out of their homes with the creation of Israel in 1948 and never allowed back. In a country that has seen little but war and economic crisis in the past few decades, almost every social and economic problem is magnified in the camps. Atallah herself is a role model. Raised in a poor Lebanese family and bullied at school, she"

Read at www.npr.org