São Paulo – Lebanese Brazilian Arabic teacher Karen Hayek (pictured above) launched on Thursday, May 13, the debut video in her YouTube channel Cultura Libanesa [Lebanese Culture]. “The channel is entirely focused on Lebanese and their descendants and Arab descendants in general. The main goal is spreading the culture, the language, the customs and interviewing important figures that most people don’t even know are descendants, thus promoting the community,” Hayek told ANBA.
Karen Hayek has taught Arabic for 23 years since she came back from Lebanon at 16. Her mother is Brazilian, and her father is a Lebanese descendant. Hayek gives private lessons, group lessons, and has an online platform where she teaches students from virtually every Brazilian state and elsewhere, giving classes to Brazilians in countries such as England, United States, Japan and even Lebanon, she says. “I have over one hundred active students,” she said.
The teacher says she decided to create the YouTube channel to serve the needs of her students. “Based on the questions they ask, their curiosity on the Arab and Lebanese culture during classes, I decided to make this show so that everybody have access to this information, not just my students. That’s the main reason why I created the show,” she said.
The first episode brings an interview with the consul general of Lebanon in São Paulo, Rudy El Azzi. “I ask him all the question my students always ask regarding consulates, citizenship, consular services for descendants, the consulate’s projects, as well as spreading some information on Lebanon. The consul also discussed some of his diplomatic experience and career,” Hayek said.
The channel has already recorded ten shows, and on Friday, 14, Hayek was recording other four or five. The 10- to 30-min episodes will be posted weekly.
Watch the first episode:
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
