Pal-Think opens «Preparing a Civic Intellectual» under Civic Education phase three

Within Pal-Think's continuing pursuit of spreading civic education in the field of democracy and human rights among Palestinian youth in the Gaza Strip, Pal-Think opened the specialised civic-education training programme titled “Preparing a Civic Intellectual”, within the activities of the “Civic Education 3” project, implemented by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The training was opened by the project coordinator, Ms Sally al-Sammak, who welcomed the audience and affirmed that the trainee-selection process came after more than 160 people registered in the announcement Pal-Think published; the names were screened and the trainees taking part in the training programme were chosen by a committee that evaluated each applicant's submission. She noted that at Pal-Think we took care to choose an elite of trainers to guarantee the trainees the utmost benefit during the training process.

For his part, the director of Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, Mr Omar Shaban, spoke — affirming that this training programme forms an essential part of the strategic goals Pal-Think works on, as it aims to spread and strengthen skills and knowledge among young people of both sexes in the issues of democracy and human rights.

He noted this training will be followed by the implementation of a series of activities built on the training's outputs, with the trainees' essential participation, so they can share the skills and knowledge they gained during the training with their young peers and with society — among these activities: carrying out awareness meetings on the topics they were trained in during the programme, preparing research papers on the issues of democracy and human rights, taking part in radio episodes to present the research papers, and presenting the papers' outputs in discussion sessions joined by researchers, representatives of civil-society institutions, and decision-makers.

The first training day was led by Mr Abdullah Sharshara, lawyer and legal researcher, under the title “International human-rights law and the Palestinian situation”. He spoke of the importance of education and awareness in the field of human rights and its role in the development and progress of societies and peoples; Sharshara then spoke of the emergence of the human-rights system, its characteristics and divisions, and the International Bill of Human Rights, touching on the principles and standards of human rights contained in the Palestinian body of laws and comparing them with international human-rights law.

It is noted that this training programme runs for seven training days, during which the target group is trained on international human-rights law and the Palestinian situation, the standards of democracy under the Palestinian system, research-writing skills in the issues of democracy and human rights, presentation and communication skills, and the skills of pressure and advocacy in the issues of democracy and human rights.