Youth Leader of Social Change Conference
Concluding the activities of the third season of Yalla Change- Promoting Youth’s Role as Change Leaders in Gaza Communities, Social Developmental Forum implemented the Youth Leaders of Social Change Conference with the aim of providing a safe space for young men and women to express their issues and priorities and discuss their demands in a number of sectors.
Mr. El-Hussein Yassin – SDF’s Administrative and Financial Officer, opened the conference attended by participants from the current and previous Yalla Change seasons and other training programs of the Forum, and a large number of representatives of governmental and private institutions, representatives of the private sector, social media activists and interested parties. In his opening speech, he stressed the need to invest in similar activities and give young people the opportunity to participate in drawing up plans and policies that relate to them, “We believe in the will of young people to change, but this will must translate into identifying needs, prioritizing and formulating plans in order to move toward influence and decision-making.”
The conference featured 3 discussion sessions that dealt with the most important priority issues for youth, which have a significant impact in raising the level of participation of young people and enhancing their opportunities to contribute positively to their communities and improve the difficult reality they face. The sessions came as follows:
Are youth partners in shaping the future?
Youth’s civic participation
Quality education, a gateway to decent economic growth.
The Forum also announced during the conference the launch of an electronic petition to demand holding comprehensive national elections as it is the only way towards national unity and ending the occupation.
First Session: Are we, youth partners in shaping the future?
The first session of the conference sessions discussed the reality of youth’s community participation from the perspective of the youth themselves and from the perspective of community leaders, where Hadeel Abu Zaid – Community Mobilizer at the Forum talked about thhe importance of community initiatives in the process of change and reviewed the most important achievements of Yalla Change program in recent campaigns and initiatives and their social impacted. She was followed by Mr. Amjad Al-Shawa – Director PNGO on the importance of youth participation and what is expected of them. In his intervention, he answered the question: How do community leaders see youth in the Gaza Strip?
The session ended with Mr. Saadi Hamad – an e-marketing consultant and trainer on how to use social media for self-expression, advocacy, awareness and obtaining job opportunities, as social media is an important component in all of the Forum’s interventions.
Second session: Youth’s civic participation
In the conference’s second session, Khalil Fahjan – a participant in Yalla Change program talked about the type of participation youth need. He discussed the concept of active participation, its components, and forms for youth. Mr. Muhammad Abu Hashem – Researcher and human rights worker at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, covered the elections. He discussed the elections as an aspect of active participation and its importance and noted that it isn’t the only form of political participation. Finally, Walla Al-Satari form Yalla Change looked into youth’s view of a more engaged future and what is required of young people to achieve more effective participation.
Third Session: Quality education, a gateway to decent economic growth
Zayoun Al-Abadi – Yalla Change participant, examined the answers to the following questions in her intervention at the conference: What education do we want in Palestine? What education is present and what education do we aspire to? while Ashraf Hijazi – a business developer at Business and Technology incubator touched on the complex economic reality for young people in Gaza and reviewed the most important solutions to achieve good economic participation for young people and improve the bad reality facing them. Ms. Doaa Siyam from UCAS Incubator spoke on the reality of entrepreneurship and incubators in Gaza and their most pressing challenges.
It is worth mentioning that Yalla Change 3 program comes in partnership with Norwegian People’s Aid- NPA and is one of SDF’s main interventions in regards to youth’s capacity building and social change.