To boost nationwide NGO cooperation, Pal-Think concludes a training programme in both Gaza and Ramallah

Pal-Think for Strategic Studies concluded a training programme in the two cities of Gaza and Ramallah, within the first stage of the project “Strengthening cooperation between the Palestinian community organisations for the sake of building the future State of Palestine”, which aims at strengthening the work and interaction between the civil-work organisations at the national level through implementing initiatives that discuss the challenges and issues facing Palestinian society and presenting scientific visions and policy proposals that support the direction of building the Palestinian state — with the participation of 34 of the civil-work institutions in the northern and southern governorates.

The training in each of Gaza and Ramallah was opened by Mr Omar Shaban, director of the Pal-Think for Strategic Studies institution, where he pointed to the principal goals of the training and the project, affirming the importance of unifying the efforts between the civil-work institutions in all the Palestinian governorates in order to contribute to finding solutions for the issues and crises facing the Palestinians, and that it is very necessary to work together at the Palestinian national level, not to work singly in each of Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.

The training targeted the individuals in charge of implementing the initiatives within this project from the work teams in the partner institutions, to develop the civil institutions' capacities in contributing positively to building an advanced Palestinian society and state. The training continued for 5 days in Gaza City and 4 days in the city of Ramallah, at the hands of competent trainers who took up several subjects in project management, human rights, women's and gender issues, the Palestinian law and constitution, communal development and youth empowerment, the foundations and principles of writing research papers, writing press reports, and social media — as the training programme focused on supplying the participants with the fundamental principles within these subjects, in a way that enables them to integrate these principles into their activities in all the current and future projects, and also during the implementation of their initiatives so that they achieve their expected goals, as these initiatives come in the second stage of the project.

The participants praised the extent of the benefit from this programme, which contributed to clarifying several concepts in all the subjects on which the training rested, and also enabled the participating institutions to exchange ideas and proposals within this project, and to become more and closely acquainted with their partners' activities, which contributes to networking to work within other future projects. It is worth mentioning that this project was announced during the month of July 2018 and 42 initiative proposals were received, and Pal-Think for Strategic Studies chose the best initiatives according to criteria the project contained, the most important of them guaranteeing the continuity of work between the civil institutions in the northern and southern governorates.