A group of 8 UWC Maastricht students has worked on The Journey Project Maastricht, a magazine featuring stories, interviews, and other creative pieces about refugees in Maastricht. They said: “We decided to do this project because we want to create awareness about the refugees, in order for people to understand their situation better. We hope that this will lessen the negative attitude that sometimes exists towards them here. When the magazine is finished, we will hand it out to people in Maastricht”. The team came up with the idea during the school’s Youth Social Entrepreneurship programme, and after pitching it to a panel of experts they were granted seed capital for developing the project!

They have just started to conduct the first interviews. This is how they met Nour Khatib, 24 from Syria. He founded Not Just A Number, which aims to be the bridge between displaced people and the civil society by carrying out initiatives such as clothing and toy distribution for refugees. “It was really fun to interview him because, although he is sometimes critical of the way refugees are treated in the Netherlands, as they are very isolated in refugee centres for example, Nour is very happy to be in The Netherlands and making truly the best of it. He is doing great things for everyone in the Maastricht community with his organisation”.

To know more about The Journey Maastricht Magazine, visit: https://thejourneymaastricht.wordpress.com/ and http://bit.ly/29fxELb

For more information about Not Just A Number, visit: http://www.notjustanumber.org/