SDF develops 15 youth initiatives in “Yalla Challenge” Bootcamp

As part of the “Yalla Challenge” Bootcamp’s initiatives challenge, SDF developed 15 youth led initiatives to be implemented in Gaza Strip in the next phase.

In a three day bootcamp, a 100 participant from the Yalla Change team underwent intensive training led by five supervisors. The training included sessions on brainstorming, outlining well-studied plans with a clear strategy, and choosing the initiatives and presentations. The choice was later made depending on the quality of the teams’ presented plans.
This challenge comes in line with motivating youth to practice their true role in making positive change in their communities and including them in social change procedures.
Mahmoud Zant, SDF Executive Director stated, ” the initiatives challenge is one of the activities of the Promoting Youth Role as Change Leaders in Gazan Communities project”. He noted that throughout the camp, 15 initiatives were constructed. The initiatives covered many topics concerning youth and marginalized groups as well as providing services to areas in need.

Zant noted that the initiatives varied between service, technical, cultural and voluntary with the local community. He also pointed out that the Forum is working on developing a number of initiatives related to empowering youth’s role in bettering the reality of the Palestinian community and improving their social participation.
When it comes the Forum’s role in developing these initiatives, Zant emphasized working on developing lively and applicable initiatives in the Gaza Strip community, led by youth in order to change their reality and regain their confidence and the community’s confidence in youth’s role as they represent the most influential segment of the community.
The innovative initiatives came out of a competitive training atmosphere among the teams. They were presented to supervisors and members of the Forum with well thought out plans, goals and a clear vision.
Participants’ feedback
Participants agreed that the initiatives challenge is a unique opportunity for young people to be more creative in presenting  their ideas, especially in having an organization that supports the efforts of young people and encourages them to develop plans for community initiatives aimed at positively serving the community as well as changing the negative misconceptions toward many issues to contain a clear positive vision and objective.

Ghazi Al Khalidi, one of the participants in the initiatives challenge worked with his team to create an application to professionally showcase marginalized women’s products, to allow them to create jobs and directly rely on themselves.
“After completing the intensive training in this unique challenge, I’m now able to create a strategy for an initiative in a rigorous technical manner and present it to the public with clear and deliberate goals and vision,” he said.
Al Khalidi’s participation comes as part of his keen desire for direct engagement in initiatives and transforming his surrounding community.

Fadwa Abdullah, however took part in the challenge giving her confidence that she can use her creative ideas to impact the marginalized groups in the community and her belief that she can change the negative perception of marginalized people, especially in their communities.
In this sense, Abdullah and her team’s initiative came to change the prevailing social perception of persons with disabilities to address and highlight their issues. The initiative is meant to mimic TEDX program, inviting people with disabilities to talk about their issues.
“My participation in this challenge resulted in my thinking outside the box which is not an easy task. It takes a long time to change the mentality of the individual, but the training camp was a challenge for all of us to prove ourselves in a short period of time and come up with creative ideas” she said.
Mohammed Mohsen also agreed that the training is aimed at developing young people’s ideas by gaining more experience in formulating positive initiatives that are capable of changing society. This challenge informed them about the process of developing initiative’s plans and applying them on the ground.
Mohsen and his team developed ‘Yalla Read’ initiative raising the awareness of the age group (15-20 years) on reading, through the implementation of specific activities, films and events in all governorates of Gaza City.
Amal Ammar was drawn to the spirit of competition, challenge, methods’ correction, and the necessity to change society’s perception.
Ammar and her team expressed the need to change the community’s perspective toward juvenile correctional facilities, as part of the initiative “Mina wfina”. This came in support of children in the Gaza Strip prisons and changing the society’s perception of them as criminals and rather seeing them as individuals seeking a safe life.

“We will focus on creating a reading library to enrich the minds

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