YLC Completes Skill-Based Trainings with YALLA Participants
The Youth Leadership Committee (YLC) is a group of eight university students who are active citizens of Nablus working to build work-related and life skills, while increasing their role in the community. Having completed 50 hours of intensive, skill-based training led by local experts, YLC members applied their newly acquired leadership, communications, reporting, and management skills to evaluate a call for applications for youth-identified community initiatives. Currently they are reviewing and fine-tuning eight initiatives submitted by 13 local youth, or participants of Youth Action Local Leadership Alliance (YALLA). YALLA is a youth-led civic engagement program – supported by the US State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) – that targets youth aged 12-21.The YLC will assist in selecting three of these initiatives to be funded, and devise implementation, monitoring and evaluation plans for each, engaging applicants and other TYO volunteers throughout the process. As a part of their role to oversee YALLA participants, the YLC led their second and third training workshops on problem solving & public speaking, and report writing & event management.
Workshop: Problem Solving & Public Speaking
In the second workshop hosted by YLC members – including Jamila Hanani, Ahmad Khateeb, and Luai Khalil – 13 YALLA participants were in attendance. The workshop was kicked-off with an introduction to problem solving techniques and the importance of finding solutions for these problems. The goal of this discussion was to create dialogue around how exactly YALLA participants can effectively address the issues their initiatives are targeting for improvement.
To train YALLA participants on public speaking skills, Jamila, Ahmad and Luai facilitated a conversation on the importance of organization and visual aids when presenting initiatives before an audience. For YALLA participants to give audiences a holistic understanding of their initiatives, YLC hosts stressed the need to share details of their initiatives from start to finish, including mission statement, main objectives, and how goals are intended to be accomplished. Furthermore, YLC hosts explained the necessity in knowing one’s audience when giving public talks on their initiatives, as information may need to be simplified when explaining initiatives to youngsters or made more formal when addressing professionals.
After training topics were addressed, each of the eight YALLA initiatives was paired with a YLC member to address the problems and services their initiatives intend to offer. Additionally, YALLA participants thoroughly explained to their YLC supervisor the aims of their initiatives and the work plans they will implement to achieve their goals. The goal of this activity was to encourage YALLA participants to know their initiatives inside-out in order to better frame presentations for perspective audiences.
At the conclusion of the training YALLA participants were asked to prepare a draft of the activities that they will be implementing to reach the goals of their initiatives, as well as a detailed budget report approximating the costs of each of the activities.
Workshop: Report Writing & Public Relations
In the third workshop hosted by YLC members – including Mohammed AbuKibash and Waleed Tamimi – 13 YALLA participants were in attendance. The workshop was offered to provide YALLA participants more clarification and revision on how to write reports, and coordinate events for their initiatives. Mohammed and Waleed began with a presentation to explain that there is a necessity to report on their initiatives in order to monitor and evaluate whether the steps they outlined are being taken and in a timely manner, to present achievements, to keep communication open between YALLA participants and their supervisors, and finally to explain challenges and give updates on progress being made.
Next, Mohammed highlighted the impact that effective public relations management (PR) can have on the implementation of their initiatives. Mohammed conveyed that if a rigorous PR campaign is put into place then YALLA participants will attract greater participation and following of their initiatives amongst the community.
To close, YALLA participants were given the opportunity to follow-up with their YLC supervisors to review presentations of their initiatives that they will give on Wednesday, June 13th at 2:30pm before the Advisory Committee (including Dr. Jawad Fatayer of An-Najah National University, Mr. Ayman Abu Ghazala, General Director of Al Hajj Taher Al-Masri Company, and Ahmad Hanani, TYO Volunteer Coordinator), who will select the three initiative finalists. YLC members provided YALLA participants with critique on their presentations and other last minute advice. We wish the YALLA participants the best of luck!
-Ahmad
Ahmad Hanini is the Volunteer Coordinator and is a member of YALLA’s Advisory Committee.