Two meetings in Khan Younis and Rafah under «Promoting Democratic Education»

The Pal-Think for Strategic Studies institution carried out two workshops within the project “Strengthening democratic education” funded by the National Endowment for Democracy NED, one of them in Rafah and the other in Khan Younis. The project aims at raising the youth's awareness of democracy, its foundations, and the rights related to it, contributing to building the youth's capacities and qualifying them to participate in decision-making and the elevation of society.

The first meeting was held in the Rafah governorate in cooperation with the Jabous charitable association, titled “The youth and communal development”. The meeting was opened by the trainee Randa al-Dawoodi, who passed the training-of-trainers course implemented within the project in subjects that took up the concepts of peace and tolerance, how to create leading, entrepreneurial youth, and training in presentation skills. She continued the meeting with an introduction to the concept of the youth and their role in developing society, and the issues in whose solution the youth can contribute so as to exercise their effective role in surpassing the obstacles facing their society and leading it toward elevation. She also touched on society's requirements of the youth, the values of effective and positive competition, and how to strive to strengthen the national identity of the youth

Meanwhile the second meeting was held in the Khan Younis governorate in cooperation with the al-Rowwad association for Palestinian youth, titled “Strengthening the youth's awareness of the political rights”. The meeting was moderated by the two young men Abdel Hakim Shubeir and Ibrahim Abu al-Nasr, both of whom had also passed the training-of-trainers course. The meeting rested on acquainting the youth with the political rights and their relation to achieving democracy through several axes, the most important of them the elections and their role as a solution for exiting the crisis of the division from which the Palestinians have suffered for a decade of time, and what the fundamental stages and conditions of the elections process are. The participants also affirmed the importance of the elections as one of the pillars on which the development of society rests.

It is worth mentioning here that these two meetings are part of several awareness and educational meetings to transfer the experiences of the youth affiliated with the project to their youth peers, in cooperation with several grassroots institutions in all the governorates of the Gaza Strip.