We are launching this crowdfunding campaign to make sustainable the only information space made by and for the migrant and refugee community in Spain. Two years ago Baynana.es was born, the first bilingual Arabic-Spanish digital magazine that addresses the social issues faced by migrants and refugees in Spain. We created this medium to visibilize the daily reality of these groups, addressing the issues that concern them and narrating their experiences in the first person, from the plurality of voices that compose them. Baynana means "among us " and encompasses us all: 'we' are 'all', there is no 'others' or 'them'.
Baynana was founded by four Syrian journalists who arrived in Spain in 2019 after leaving Syria because of the war. We met the porCausa team shortly after arriving in our new host country and its members have become our second family. They have helped us to build a magazine whose differential value is to enrich the narrative from and about the migrant community, promoting cultural diversity and combating stereotypes and hate speech.
This project has been built with few material resources and tons of illusion, but to keep it alive we need your help. We want to continue to expand our team to people of other sensibilities, origins and nationalities and to continue telling stories that set the social agenda. To do so, we still need your support. Everything we raise in this campaign will go entirely to the sustainability of the project.
Main features and goals of the crowdfunding campaign
The support network that has welcomed us in Spain, porCausa.org, has helped us get off the ground: thanks to donations and the contribution of many people who have given us their time generously and selflessly we have been able to build our website and produce our first reports.
We are eager to do journalism and continue learning, but in order to be sustainable we need more resources. For example, we still need basic equipment, such as computers to edit our videos and more cameras. We need translators to help us translate and adapt our pieces into Spanish. We also see the need for more collaborators: we need a larger and more diverse team, which will allow us to tell what is happening outside of Madrid and bring different sensibilities to the project.
If you believe that it is necessary to find and promote informative spaces where more diverse and plural voices are heard; if you believe, like us, that journalism should serve to offer useful tools, support the first media created by and for the migrant and refugee community that actively advocates for networking among those who live in the Spanish state and combat the discourse of hate. We count on you?
Why this is important
We want to continue to make visible the daily reality of the refugee and migrant community, while offering useful and quality information to these communities to navigate the legal and bureaucratic system of the host country.
Also combating existing stereotypes and hate speech, highlighting success stories of migrants and telling the parallels with other countries and the cultural heritage left to us by al-Andalus.
In short, continue to build bridges between the migrant and refugee community and Spanish society as a whole, to bring the different sectors of society closer together, emphasizing our common history and culture. Can you help us?
Team and experience
What have we done so far?
Thanks to your patronage, we have been able to practice journalism from a migrant and human rights perspective. We have published dozens of stories in the form of reports, analyses, interviews, documentaries and opinion articles. The following is a non-exhaustive compilation of some of them:
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Our Stories: set of interviews and stories of migrants who have achieved their goals in the host country.
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Interviews with migrant women: Ukrainian, Iranian and Afghan organize to claim basic rights and offer assistance to migrant communities.
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Migratory regulation in Spain: a pending measure Report with interviews and analysis on the RegulaciónYa campaign, promoted by a thousand migrant and anti-racist groups and organizations to demand the massive regularization of migrants and refugees.
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The journey of death from Sudan to the wall of Melilla: we talked to several survivors who crossed to Melilla in June 2022, where 37 people died trying to climb the six-meter high fence.
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Health problems in Cañada Real as a consequence of the power cut: photo report where we document respiratory diseases in children and elderly people with chronic ailments. Previously this one about the women of Cañada Real.
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The hell of Libyan prisons as told by Syrians detained in them: we spoke to survivors of Libyan prisons, one of the countries that mistreats migrants the most on their way to Europe.
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Coverage of the earthquake in Syria and Turkey in February 2023: thanks to our contacts in Syria, we identified and denounced that aid to help in the rescue efforts was not reaching the North of the country and we formulated, produced and disseminated the project "Voices of Syria" for local journalists to report on the consequences of the earthquake.
We are working on several collaborative projects on memory:
- From Madrid to Syria: dignity and memory. A pioneering awareness-raising project in Spain that aims to make society aware of the need for migrants to find refuge outside their country. It is a historical tour through the city of Madrid, led by refugees of Syrian origin who have been forced to leave their country fleeing the war. During the tour, the participants visit important scenes of the Spanish Civil War. In each of them, the history of Spain is deepened and a parallelism is established with episodes that took place during the Syrian war.
- The Islamic origins of Madrid: we are working on a series of documentaries on the Islamic history of Madrid together with the Center for the Study of Islamic Madrid (CEMI).
The founders of our magazine make analysis in other media such as eldiario.es or revista5w, among others.
Baynana magazine has gained notoriety: more than three hundred media pieces, thousands of followers and visualizations in social networks, and dozens of collaborations with local and international media.
Since its arrival in Spain, the Baynana team has been the medium through which refugees and migrants express themselves, especially after the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey in February of this year. In addition, we have participated in the most important congresses on journalism, such as the Huesca Congress and the Denia Congress, as well as the Journalism Congress on Migrations in Merida.
We want to continue to be the voice and the space for immigrants and refugees: we are the first and only journalistic project created by and for migrants and refugees.