Civic Empowerment Project (CEP)

The Civic Empowerment Project is funded by the British Department Fund for International Development (DFID) and administered by Y Care international in partnership with the YMCA of Lebanon.  Its primary goal is to increase civic participation of Lebanese youth - with particular focus on disadvantaged youth, the disabled and those living in rural areas.  
Our programs, implemented throughout Lebanon, are structured to get youth to actively participate in civil society and to learn effective lobbying skills.  And they encourage participation through partnerships between youth groups and other community groups tackling similar action projects.   It is an open program, its information, lessons-learned, tips on how to go about effectively participating and engaging government institutions and policy makers to listen and act on behalf of their constituents, is made available for public use.

Activities & Training

Activities and the training under CEP have included the following:

• The production, promotion, selection and delivery of both basic and advanced training to young people throughout Lebanon
• Citizenship, leadership skills, advocacy, lobbying and campaigning
• Information technology
• Management skills
• Establishment of four elected youth committees (one per region) and one National Youth Committee that oversees the activities of the four other committees.
• National networking sessions to develop a coordinated strategy on how to influence government policy at both the local and national levels.
• Initiation of meetings in each region between youth committees, the government, and Civil Society Organizations (CSO).
• Establishment of an interactive web-site as a learning, networking, and advocacy tool.
• Training select youth to become website regional coordinators responsible for designing, updating, and managing the website (http://www.ymca-cep.org).
• Production of materials needed for advocacy campaigns.
• Planning and implementing local action committees to address common youth challenges such as unemployment, environment awareness and team building skills.

The achievements of the CEP during the year 2007 were as follows:

Community Mobilization Activities:
Area committees in Akkar, Hasbaya, Kesserwan and the Bekaa held regular meetings to review the progress and implementation of the Action Plans of different Local initiatives stated as below:

• Platform to create links for unemployed youth in  Hasbaya area;
• Protection of green areas and safeguarding the natural forest in the region of Hasbaya;
• Orientation office for unemployed youth in Akkar;
• Development of a marketing plan to promote agricultural products in the Bekaa Valley;
• Re-establishment of a scouts group in the Bekaa;
• Development of a rural tourism project in Kesserwan.

 Website News:
The youth committees throughout Lebanon are working on developing data to upgrade their respective web pages.  A new design of the local web page is completed.
The areas’ web page has been designed by one of the participants and this design will be used as a common one for all groups.

National Committee meetings:
The National Committee meetings are taking places in different areas throughout Lebanon. The first took place in Beirut on the 4th of February 2007. During this meeting, the National Youth Committee discussed and evaluated the situation in the country. We have organized also a session to re-formulate the action plan especially that the time frame is getting more tensed and action should start fast. The decision taken was to implement an assessment with youth groups in different areas and also to gather information in the purpose of taking the decision about the advocacy topic to be followed up in the coming National Committee Meetings.
A second National Committee Meeting took place in the Bekaa on the 18th of March 2007. During this meeting different activities were organized and after gathering and analyzing all the assessments from different areas, the youth groups decided to start preparing to act on a study about youth unemployment in Lebanon. For that, they decided to start working with different youth groups in different areas in the purpose of suggesting ideas and action to the government in the purpose of finding further solutions or proposition that can be applied by the government on the national level and which can help to reduce youth unemployment.