One of the first projects of the PYM was the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship. The scholarship honors the legacy of Ghassan Kanafani, a political leader, thinker and novelist who captured the imagination of many. Kanafani’s cultural work, seemingly timeless, teaches us experiences of struggle and exile and translating those experiences into organization and political commitment. 

As an organization with a vision of activating the role of Arab youth in service of our national liberation struggle, we also sought to honor the legacy of Kanafani and support Arab youth  in their academic and cultural endeavors, for which few scholarships of this kind existed. 

The scholarship accepted cultural and literary work as submissions, and top submissions were published in a yearly anthology. Funds raised from the anthology were used to offer scholarships to the top three submissions. Locally, chapters came together with our community for yearly anthology launches, which served as community events that highlighted Palestinian revolutionary culture and literature.

The scholarship and the anthology’s production and circulation demonstrate PYM’s continued commitment to resistance arts and cultural production in order to provide space for Arab youth to re-engage the Palestinian narrative and popularize the right to resist occupation and co-optation.