GAZA / SUMMER GAMES

A quarter of a million Palestinian children are participating in the fifth annual Gaza Summer Games which kicked off on Wednesday with an Olympic style torch relay-race through the Gaza Strip. UNRWA

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:02:11
• Production Date: 15 June 2011
• Asset Language: Original
• Corporate Name: UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES IN THE NEAR EAST - UNRWA
• Subject Topical: FINE ARTS; LITERATURE; MUSIC; LEISURE; SPORTS
• Geographic Subject: MIDDLE EAST
• MAMS Id: U110615f

Description

STORY: GAZA / SUMMER GAMES
TRT: 2:11
SOURCE: UNRWA
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 15 JUNA 2011, GAZA, OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

Shotlist

1. Various shots, children running a relay with torches along the Gaza Strip from Rafah in the south to Gaza City in the north
2. Various shots, torch-bearers arriving at UNRWA compound in Gaza City
3. Wide shot, torch-bearers looking down at crowd, waving
6. Wide shot, balloons going up in the sky over venue
7. Med shot, Gaza break-dance group performing
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Christopher Gunness, Spokesman, United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees:
“It’s wonderful summer games. Here you have children just being children having fun. For six weeks, 250,000 children playing on beaches and having fun on trampolines, it’s a whole bunch of fun. Children being normal under blockade that is what it’s all about; giving them a sense of normality in a situation where anything but normal.”
9. Med shot, torch on top of building in evening sky

Storyline

The United Nations (UN) Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), for the fifth time, has arranged Summer Games for 250,000 children in Gaza, offering them activities that children all over the world enjoy during their summer holidays.

The games opened today (15 June) with a torch ceremony that was preceded by at torch relay were 57 children brought the torches in 1 to 2 kilometer distances all the way from Rafah in the southernmost part to Gaza City in the north. All these young runners had taken part in the first ever Gaza Marathon last month.

During the Summer Games, the children will participate in theatre, art, sports, beach games, music and dance activities across the Gaza Strip for six weeks at almost 300 locations, in schools, on beaches and in orphanages and hospitals.

UNRWA’s Spokesman Christopher Gunness said that the Summer Games are an opportunity for Gazan children have “a sense of normality in a situation where anything but normal.”

In the past, kids participating in the Summer Games have broken two world records that have been noted by the Gunness Book of Records, one for the biggest amount of kites flown simultaneously, and another for the biggest amount of basket balls dribbled simultaneously.

This year will see four world record attempts, as the Gaza kids will try to dribble the biggest amount of footballs at the same time, and create the world's biggest handprint painting, as well as try to break their own previous two world records.