Assirk Assaghir is made up of a small group of motivated trainers, a larger group of enthusiastic students and occasional support from International trainers. Members of the Assirk Assaghir team come from the Nablus area, including the surrounding villages and refugee camps such as Askar Refugee Camp to the east of the city. The trainers are highly skilled in both circus and dance skills, with individuals specializing in diabolo, stilts, acrobatics, clowning and dabkah (a traditional Palestinian dance). All of the trainers have spent time in Europe accompanying students to circus festivals and gaining valuable training experience themselves.

The students at Asskir Assaghir are equally motivated and excited about learning circus and dance. Many students have been with Assirk Assaghir since its establishment in 2004, creating a family-like environment in the center. In this spirit, the older students often participate in the children’s training as assistant instructors in order to cultivate a close relationship between all of the members of Assirk Assaghir and encourage leadership and teamwork. The group ranges in age from 6 to 22 years old and students come from different areas of the Nablus district. Assirk Assaghir is one of the only sport facilities in Nablus that is open to both female and male students and encourages bi-gendered classes. Anyone interested in participating in Assirk Assaghir’s program is welcome, regardless of his/her location, economic background, gender and skill level. The only qualification is that they must be interested in circus and willing to have a lot of fun.

Assirk Assaghir runs multiple programs throughout the year including many workshops and performances.

Asskir Assaghir provides circus workshops for children and teenagers in acrobatics, stilts, unicycle, clowning, juggling, trapeze, tissue and others with occasional workshops in music and acting. During the workshops students practice their skills through a combination of games and repetition of movements. All activities require that the students encourage and support each other, creating an environment of trust where students feel free to take risks and express themselves. In addition to skills training, trainers also facilitate a group discussion after each class in which students are free to talk about what is happening in their daily lives. During these discussions the trainers encourage the students to become active, not only in circus, but in other aspects of their lives, especially in school. The circus school takes care to organize workshops around the students’ school schedule, which is ruled by intense testing periods. For this reason, the summer months of vacation from school is the time in which Assirk Assaghir functions at full capacity with daily workshops and multiple performances.

Assirk Assaghir is not only a circus school, but also a performing team. In addition to the occasional performances by the students at the conclusion of their courses, the trainers and older groups of students are also asked to perform in many different centers around Nablus and in the refugee camps. Performing for the community allows Assirk Assaghir to reach more people than it is able to with the limited space and resources of its center. A performance in Iraq-Bourin village for handicapped people and their families, a show in the Child Culture Center in Nablus during Ramadan, and a performance by the teenage circus group in Jericho are some examples of recent performances. The most exciting opportunity to perform came in July of 2008 when the circus students worked with a Dabkah (traditional Palestinian dance) group to perform in Nablus’ historic Roman amphitheater for more than 1,500 spectators.

Assirk Assaghir is based in Nablus, Palestine in the northern West Bank; one of the areas the most hard-hit by the Israeli occupation. When one thinks of occupation, the multiple checkpoints surrounding the city, frequent invasions by the Israeli army in the night and a high unemployment rate come to mind immediately. However, the more subtle effects, such as a lack of playgrounds in most neighborhoods, an unbelievably high student to teacher ratio in schools and almost no affordable extracurricular activities are the realities that affect the children. Assirk Assaghir focuses on combating these subtle effects of the occupation in order to provide children with a safe place to play, more individual attention than they get in schools and a fun extracurricular activity that builds skills and allows them to develop their personalities.