A Palestinian woman with hearing impairment displays a drawing she made for an animated cartoon at Youths' Mettle institution in al-Mughazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on March 7, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

Palestinian women with hearing impairment watch a cartoon at Youths' Mettle institution in al-Mughazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on March 7, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

Palestinian women with hearing impairment take a photo for a drawing made for an animated cartoon at Youths' Mettle institution in al-Mughazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on March 7, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

A Palestinian woman with hearing impairment makes a drawing for an animated cartoon at Youths' Mettle institution in al-Mughazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on March 7, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 
"Congratulations, you have won a chance to join our team. You are very welcome to attend the evaluation interview before starting your work." It was a message sent to Hiba Abu Jazar, a 24-year-old Palestinian woman with hearing impairment from the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

This plum job comes after Jazar, along with seven others with hearing problems, produced a short animated cartoon about all her difficulties in finding jobs after leaving college with the help of Youths' Mettle Center, a non-government institution at al-Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

Jazar graduated from the Department of Information Technology at the Islamic University in Gaza, and had long dreamed of a golden chance to start off her life and earn a living, but the dire reality taught her an indelible lesson when she lost her first job so soon.

"I lost the job before I even started it, simply because I have a hearing impairment," complained the young woman through an interpreter of sign language, adding she was swallowed by depression for weeks after the heavy blow.

Months later, she was accepted by an international company merely as a cleaner, a job that hurt her pride even more until the cartoon Why Not came into being as part of a project implemented by Youths' Mettle Center.

Haneen Kuraz, coordinator of the project, told Xinhua that the project aims at helping people with hearing impairment to express their frustration with the dire reality by making cartoons.

"We targeted eight talented young women with hearing impairment who drew their ideas and thoughts on paper" before producing a cartoon out of them, Kuraz said.

The project also recruited eight female workers who learned the sign language to communicate with their colleagues with hearing impairment, the 35-year-old woman added.

"This unique project taught us that people with such disabilities suffer from not being accepted by society and they find it difficult to communicate with those around them. What's also interesting is that we discovered animation helped the two groups express themselves," she noted.

"Some women (including Jazar) who participated in the project managed to obtain jobs as freelancers with local companies for media production," Kuraz told Xinhua, planning to implement more such projects to help people with disabilities.

In Gaza, there are approximately 49,000 people with disabilities, or 2.4 percent of the total population, of whom 2,364 suffer hearing impairment.

These people live in "difficult conditions which are hardly tolerated by their counterparts in other parts of the world," said Palestinian officials.