The «Public leadership and communication skills» training concludes

The members of the Youth Forum for Politics and Development received a training titled “Skills of public leadership and communication”, within five training topics organised by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The trainings aim to build the personality of the club's members and prepare them to lead positive change in their communities. The training was presented by Ms Samah al-Safadi and Mr Mohammed al-Natour, who discussed with the trainees pivotal topics, among them the strategies of effective communication, body language, active listening, teamwork, and other topics.

The members took part in a series of activities on the first of the three training days, which aimed to hone their leadership and team-building skills. The participants cooperated to complete specific tasks in groups, in which each member was assigned their role based on their different skills and knowledge. The trainer Samah al-Safadi facilitated those activities, shedding light on the team's life cycle and the stages of its formation to complete various, multiple tasks. The activities included an interactive discussion titled “Is leadership an inherited or an acquired quality?”.

On the following day, Ms Samah continued the training with an activity in which teams formed by the members represented the different leadership styles by carrying out short theatrical sketches followed by a round of discussion. Among these sketches, one of the groups carried out a simulation of the electoral process as an example of democratic leadership. After concluding her activities, Ms Samah welcomed Mr Mohammed al-Natour to continue the training in communication skills. After a short break, Mr Mohammed welcomed Mr Omar Shaban, director of the Pal-Think institution, praising the institution's effective role, and he made clear the course's goals and its expected outputs from the forum's members. This was followed by the start of the interactive training activities, which took up the components of the effective communication process and its importance in increasing productivity, raising the level of the quality of delivering information, and accomplishing tasks. He then discussed the importance and strategies of active listening and hearing as a fundamental component of the communication process.

Al-Natour continued the training on the final day, taking up the media and methods of communication among the team's members or with the surrounding environment. He likewise shed light on the importance of body language and its techniques for delivering information more effectively and avoiding misunderstanding. Other activities during the training took up the personal differences between senders and receivers and how to deal with the various challenges resulting from those differences.

In total, the training extended from the fifth to the seventh of November 2019, an embodiment of the institution's endeavours to develop a human cadre able to deal with the various challenges, conscious of contemporary issues, and possessing the skills and knowledge sufficient to leave a positive imprint and lead far-reaching change in Palestinian society.