Increasing participation of youth and women in the Egyptian Local Council Elections, by raising awareness about their rights and duties and equipping them with the needed know-how and skills.
Y-Lead informs, intrigues and educates Egyptian Youth (especially women) on issues of local political and civic engagement, specifically on Local Councils. The project capacitates potential youth to become active leaders in their communities through cross-sectoral initiative work and enables members of the target group to run for office in the next local council elections. Moreover, the project initiates and supports a policy debate club network and an academic platform to bolster young voices in Egyptian policy-making. Phase 2 of Y-Lead will deepen and widen the activities of phase 1 (2019-20).
Notably, Phase 2 will greatly widen the number of Egyptian youth and women reached and trained to over 20.000 in all Egyptian governorates with dedicated attention to frontier governorates. All activities are de- signed to work in conjunction with COVID-19 precautionary measures.
Project Goals
The project aims to increase the social and political participation of Egyptian youth and women in their communities, through capacitating them to be able to lead cross-sectoral initiatives and to run for offices in the local elections.
Target Groups
The project targets youth and women from all 27 Egyptian governorates to become active in the social and political spheres. The target group will be empowered to implement initiatives that target a wider radius of marginalized population including disadvantaged children, adults with disabilities, and others.
Activities
The project consists of 5 main working packages:
First, awareness campaigns on local initiatives where participants will be informed about the electoral process through online and offline workshops and a tailor made simulation game. Second, scientific platform for political participation that will work on improving participants’ critical and analytical thinking through engaging in debate clubs and writing policy papers. In working package 3, participants will design and implement their own cross-sectoral local initiatives for their communities, in cooperation with local stakeholders.
Following, they will receive more advanced training on capacity building to run for local offices which includes the legal background of local councils, the communication and soft skills needed and campaign design and implementation.
Finally, the online platform Ma’kana (where the debate clubs will have taken place) will serve as an online training platform run by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, making civic education accessible to everyone on a long-term basis.
Outcomes / Achievements
The project aims to achieve increased participation of youth and women in the public sphere as well as increase their virtual participation on social media platforms in understanding and debating political issues; active citizenship is widely spread among target groups.
Furthermore, it aims to achieve a level of empowerment of youth and women that enables them to take leading roles in the public sphere and influence public discourse and policy agendas at the community level, in addition to implementing and leading local initiatives through the establishment of cross-sectoral networks on governorates level.
Finally, it aims to increase online education and participation of youth through the tailor-made online education platform Ma’kana aiming to greatly increase the project’s educational outreach to youth and women in all working packages.
