MADARAT Center for Community Development - مركز مدارات للتنمية المجتمعية

Main Activities: MADARAT Center has executed many programs and activities that are meeting with its establishment objectives and mission, and the success in conducting these programs gave MADARAT and its professional team a practical experience in good-governance polices and raised their capacity to implement future projects successfully. Citizen Participation Madarat aims at enhancing women and youth civic participation and responsibility in the Palestinian society, we provide women and youth with training opportunities and encourage them to give back to the society. We also encourage and work on women and youth in developing their communities by giving them the chance to lead and have a strong voice in community initiatives. Moreover, we organize social events that activate the role of women and youth in democratic political participation, as well as enable women and youth and prepare them to represent Palestine internationally. We focus on enhancing international cooperation and knowledge-sharing among organizations, thus, Madarat has formed a coalition that is executing its activities through (18) cooperative youth and women organizations around all of Palestinian West Bank Cities. This coalition is primarily aiming at the following objectives: - Training and building the capacity of women and youth about the citizenship rights and duties, as well as the electoral process and its importance, and how to integrate within the civic public life activities. - Motivating the Palestinian youth and women to be engaged within the electoral process through encouraging them to participate in the voting day within intensive awareness campaigns. - Increasing the cooperation, networking and partnerships opportunities between the Palestinian youth and women civil society organizations. This happened through a series of activities that were implemented as follows: - At first an intensive motivational awareness campaign has been published over social media and other media outlets to set a base for a positive behavioral change and raise the awareness on the importance of the electoral participation. - A Training and capacity building camp has been held to improved capacity and skills of more than 200 focal activists within 20 civil society organizations around all West Bank cities on the electoral process, transparency, community participation and accountability. - Monitoring the elections campaigns of each local council and municipality running for elections and reviewing their electoral programs and promises. - Spreading the trained youths and women to observe the local councils’ elections. - Conducting several community dialogue and social accountability sessions on the commitment of the local councils and municipalities to the electoral promises mentioned in their electoral programs. We encourage females and youths to be part of the change and take action, through raising their awareness and building capacity among them, in order to strengthen the participation of women and youth in decision-making processes. Women Economic Empowerment On the other hand, another horizon that Madarat work on is Women Economic Empowerment. We are acquainted with the obstacles and difficulties women and youth face due to the lack of job opportunities in the Palestinian market. We devote our efforts to assist women and youth in improving their skills, such as technical & financial skills through introducing them to new technologies they can employ, in addition to vocational skills such as problem-solving and time-management. Madarat has conducted several activities to achieve the sustainability of the women’s economic empowerment through Raising the marketing and managerial skills for needy women as well as Providing the local markets with healthy food products. Through these activities, Madarat has created at least 6 direct jobs for women who support their families; the jobs had expanded into 10 within 5 months in the second stage. More women have become independent economically and have their own income. While the second project focused on training women and youths regarding purchasing and selling mechanisms as well as management, and marketing skills to work on providing food and healthy products for school canteens; this has provided jobs for over 10 women and 3 youths. Madarat had also worked on establishing a Youth Cafe that provided opportunities for more than 250 participants (most of them are females) to have a free discussion space with 12 political decision makers and social leaders in the society. - Most of the participants become more prepared and looking to be more involved in the public life. - A free space was provided for creative and influential youth (focusing on Females) in several fields to meet with those who have inspiring experiences and decision makers, preparing and producing a high-quality recommendation record and sent for the decision makers in order to share them with the decision–makers according to the youth vision. Institutional and Individuals Capacity Building and Empowerment Programs are also from the main activities that Madarat adopts, more than 2000 social activists (most of them females) and 55 local and women organizations were trained and gained skills on topics of creating and managing volunteering programs and having additional general life Skills. We also invest in our volunteers and involve them in international partnership programs, we provide international chances for the center’s volunteers and activities including females to participate in the international youth exchanges, conferences, forums and workshops around the world, by the way to give them the opportunity to share and exchange their experiences and develop their knowledge more and more.