Rooted Threads is a healing-based storytelling and community-building program created for Palestinian, Arab, and Middle Eastern youth who are navigating collective grief, cultural fragmentation, and systemic injustice in the wake of ongoing genocide, violence, anti-Palestinian hate. Through storytelling, creative expression, and peer connection, Threads provides a space for young people to process their experiences, reclaim their narratives, and build resilience.

In addition to being a space for emotional healing, Threads is also a space for learning, exploration, and empowerment. Participants will engage in interactive workshops focused on:

• Identity exploration, helping youth reconnect with their cultural, ancestral, and personal sense of self

• Solidarity building and joint struggle, situating their experiences within broader movements for justice and collective liberation

• Emotional literacy, supporting youth in naming, navigating, and expressing their emotions with care and agency

• Arts as resistance, using poetry, visual art, storytelling, and movement as powerful tools for truth-telling and transformation

  The program centers the emotional needs and lived realities of youth impacted by the genocide in Gaza, destruction in Lebanon, and the rising tide of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab violence globally. Recognizing that many of these wounds are both inherited and ongoing, Threads fosters a supportive environment where stories are held with care, and transformation is made possible through connection and shared purpose.