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>View discussions about this entry País: Bahrain
Organization: MideastYouth.com
Field of Work - social justice/human rights
Year project started (or projected start date) (yyyy) - 2006
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Project URL: http://www.MideastYouth.com
What is the primary problem your venture is trying to address and how are you addressing it (or planning to address it)? - In a region where the freedom to explore freely and formulate informed opinions are greatly constrained and dissent is neither welcomed nor tolerated, the Internet has provided youth with an avenue to break through the barriers. Through utilizing the inherent powers of the Internet, MideastYouth.com built the region’s most diverse forum, where we challenge each other on a daily basis. Our reach extends beyond the written word, and we have created platforms that allow our members to share audio and visual messages. We believe that forging partnerships and aiding young, promising activists would hasten the sowing of the seeds of change, and to that effect we are committed to providing technological assistance to those in need. In our recognition of the Internet as a powerful platform to reshape our societies, MideastYouth.com offers free hosting services to organizations or individuals who share the network’s vision and values. Our mission is to help such organizations and individuals attain their fullest potential through encouraging involvement in media-related activities, and helping them join the ever-growing chorus calling for social change in the region.
Project Description - Describe your project in one sentence: To inspire and provide young people with the freedom and opportunity of expression, and promote a fierce but respectful dialogue among the highly diverse youth of all sects, socio-economic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs in the Middle East.
Unique and different - Describe what makes your idea unique and different: MideastYouth.com is an organically self-created social organism, which employs a creative, innovative approach to social change. We have over 180 activists and bloggers in our network who are engaged in a fierce but respectful dialogue with one another in advocating for freedom of expression and access to information. They represent over 22 countries, making us the most diverse platform for intellectual dialogue in the region. Sworn enemies, nurtured to hate and distrust "the other"; fervent adherents to religions or ideologies, taught to believe that theirs is the only true path; aggrieved victims of violence who lost sight of the humanity in others. MideastYouth.com has delivered an opportunity to have our long-held convictions contested. No other independent, youth-created network in the MENA region has successfully integrated and celebrated the diversity of heritage and opinions.
Project plan - What is your project plan for the next 6 months? Due to the huge diversity we have within our group, English was chosen as the language of communication as it is a unifying factor which eases communication. However, we were painfully aware that through making that decision we were faced with the exclusion of millions of voices; fluent English speakers do not constitute a majority of the Middle Eastern population. To truly live up to our mission of promoting constructive dialogue, it is crucial that we extend our reach and provide content in regional languages. A simple yet effective solution would be to offer translated versions of select, highlighted posts in Arabic and Farsi - the two most widely spoken languages in the region.
Partnerships - What are some of your most successful partnerships and how have you created them? Our most successful partnership, if it can be considered as such, was the recognition we got from The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, where MideastYouth.com was considered one of 4 projects that has made a "significant contribution to the Internet and its impact on society over the past decade." Aside from that we received a $5,000 grant in 2007 from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation for leading the "Best New Intellectual Entrepreneurship Project." Despite these grants, we remain entirely independent, but network with and provide platforms for dozens of regional NGOs that require our help.
Impact - Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact. In two short years, MideastYouth.com has become a recognized leader in creating opportunities for dialog among youth of diverse backgrounds from the Middle East and North Africa and those with strong ties to the region, receiving a lot of regional and international coverage, as well as attempts by regional governments to be shut down due to the huge amount of controversial material within the site and its many projects.
Effectiveness - How many people has your project served to date? Exactly who benefits from your innovation? Our project is digitally-based, and its reach extends beyond geographical boundries, thus estimating the number of people served by our project is difficult. We connect the diverse religious and ethnic groups in the Middle East and diaspora, allowing warring communities to see the humanity in each other and hear differing viewpoints.
Obstacles - What are some of the foreseeable obstacles to maximizing your impact? Sadly, our personal safety and security is our biggest challenge and our biggest obstacle. Members contribute from countries that might turn around and arrest them without notice, in which the penalty for blogging may be incarceration, and if a legislative proposal is approved in Iran, execution. And yet, each of us risks these consequences out of our passion for what we are doing together to advocate for freedom of expression by doing it. We also have limited resources. The MENA nations have been slow to recognize human rights and free speech as being universal. While we have occasionally received interest from potential sponsors within the region, they inevitably back out when they realize the scope of our organization's activism on behalf of controversial and unpopular constituencies. They feel that it is too controversial to support an organization that campaigns for the rights of migrants, and women, against honour killings and human trafficking, and on behalf of the Baha'is and other oppressed minorities.
Finance details - If known, provide information on your finances and organization:
• Money raised and/or in-kind donations (donated space and/or materials) • Number of people on your team and their roles • Number of partners: Grants: $5,000 from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation $10,000 from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School Anything besides that were seperate donations from members (up to $3,000) Creative funding - Please describe creative ways that you have acquired funding and other resources? When applying for funding from the Knight Foundation, we created a small video podcast where we went around and asked random young people what their vision for the future is, what issues would they like to see addressed, what kind of resources they would need to help them achieve it, and what means they find to be most effective (technology, music, film, etc.) Unfortunately we never got a Knight grant, our base being outside of the United States severely limits us from requesting a decent amount of independent funding in this field.
Other non finance needs - What non-financial resources/services do you need in order to help sustain your project? Growing readership, the increased seriousness of projects, and our impending graduations mean that the time has come to make the transition to a professional organization with a combination of paid and volunteer support. We need professional IT services to help us maintain our role as one of the leaders in this field, as well as a team of professional full-time translators in order to help us make our work as visible and accessible as possible throughout this region and beyond.
Motivation - What was the motivation or defining moment that led you to create this project? Tell us the story. Moved as a young child by the disrespectful and inhumane treatment of immigrant workers that I witnessed, I kept in my heart a deep sense of outrage and injustice. There is no force more powerful, it is said, than that of righteous indignation! Increasingly frustrated in my early college years by the one-dimensional portrayal throughout media of Middle Eastern youth – a portrayal virtually unanswered because of censorship and state control of media in the region - I turned to my keyboard to answer with my own voice, to show not only the diversity of ethnicities, religions, and cultures in the region, but also the diversity of opinion, fervour, ideals, hopes, and politics; to portray for the first time in the global discourse Middle Eastern youth in all our depth, our feelings, and our complexity. I was joined over time by a growing number of similar voices, declaring in unison that we are Muslim and moderate, idealistic and hopeful, Jewish and Zionist and peaceful; we are Christians, Baha’i, Sunni and Shia; Persians and Arabs; Turks, Berbers and Kurds, and we are all here so that the world hears us in our own voices. We are humanity, with feelings and dreams that unite us with the rest of the world.
Awards - Please describe any awards or recognition you have received (either personal or for your team)? Berkman Award for Internet Innovation:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/4316 Winner of New Intellectual Entrepreneurship Project What is your age? - 22
Contact Information:
Esra Al Shafei
Founder/Director MideastYouth.com (NGO) Discussions about this entry |
Mideast Youth: Providing platforms for public voice
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Hey Esra,
Your video is excellent and is dedicated to an important social issue. Could you explain where you plan to target your funding, will it be used to help implement a new idea and/or aspect to Mideast Youth?
Thanks!
Kate
Ashoka's Youth Venture
Dear Kate, thanks!
The funding will be used to empower and expand the use and visibility of our project by making it entirely accessible to people who do not speak English within the region (the majority) through making our work available in Farsi and Arabic, the most prominent languages in the Middle East. This point is explained in more detail in my answer to "What is your project plan for the next 6 months?"
A further advantage of this plan would be facilitating the overcoming of language barriers through allowing users to write articles or create videos in their native languages, but ensuring their opinions reach a global audience by translating it professionally into English.
To date, we have been relying on volunteers to provide translated material. Such a measure however came with many drawbacks, namely unprofessional translations, delays in publishing and a serious lack of frequency. The funding would address this issue and make our needs entirely possible, expanding our audience by millions who wish to engage in our discussions and activism for regional human rights, women, tolerance, status of underrepresented ethnic/religious minorities and more. Mideast Youth has a record of firsts in this regard, specifically in the unique and creative ways we choose to tackle such crucial issues, and demands of making our work available in these languages are rapidly increasing.
Currently, our outreach is constrained due to the limitations of language. We have studied our needs greatly and this is by far our biggest priority to meet within the next 6 months, and we cannot do it without assistance, hence this application. It is a grave challenge that we are determined to overcome through your support.
I should probably add the specifics of how the funds would be distributed, and how it would sustain the growth of our plan:
The $1,000 will be used to build the professional platforms for this project. $500 for the Arabic platform, and then $500 for the Farsi platform. This is sustainable, because it's something that will be created as a fundamental part of our website, therefore encouraging professional translators to commit to our project and eventually achieving our expressed plan. This fund will begin the actual process of making our work accessible through translated content, hosting the work of thousands of individuals throughout years.
A technical error with the system has made my age appear as 11 (I tried editing it several times without success.) Please note that I am actually 22 years old.