Capacity Building

Capacity building primarily takes place through the Social Change Program, a 12 months capacity building program that relies on creating learning spaces, experience sharing spaces, as well as practical work.

The Social Change Program includes the following formal components:

Training modules: The training is divided in three modules:

• Gender expression Gender expression, sexualities, social justice and sexuality education
  
  This module provides a rigorous historically and theoretically nuanced overview of the basic tenets of gender and sexuality as well as more focused considerations of more bounded areas of study, whether the history of gender and sexuality in the MENA region as well as implications of gender, sexuality, and race in a global and regional context, this modules also will present an overview of the legal context in the MENA region and how sexuality and gender expression are used to justify violence against women.
  During this module participants will be invited to reflect on their own sexual moral development, as well as learn more about facilitating groups and discussions centered on sexuality with different groups of people. 
• Strategic Planning and Media production
  
  The training component was concluded with a mandatory training that tackled most of the practical tools that a young activist needs to understand and master, mostly organizational management, proposal writing, project design, concept notes, reporting, financial management, etc.
  During this module the participants were solicited to give recommendations for the development of the program during the upcoming years.
  This module is also media centered module, participants will be given tools to produce small scale media, notably the basics of photography and videomaking, in addition to digital and online security. In the basics of photography, the program focused on lighting, angle, positioning, best practices, etc. As for the basics of filmmaking, it included basic editing, preparing to film an event, filming an interview, etc. 
• Advocacy and lobbying technique and online security
  
  This module provides the participants with the tools in order to make a change in their countries now or in the future.The 4 days training is going through the journey of the advocacy cycle, the participants learn:
  1. Identifying the problem and analyze it
  2. Identify the main goal and the objectives
  3. Identify the stakeholders
  4. Building coalition and network
  5. Writing an advocacy letter
  6. Negotiation techniques
  7. Advocacy tools on a national, regional and international level (including UN mechanisms)
  8. Monitoring and evaluationDuring this module, participants will also be introduce to different security tools that will help protect their work and the community they are serving.

Inter-regional and intersectional learning: Through the implementation and the facilitation of internships and mentorships between our participants and senior activists or specialists, from various regional countries and thematic experiences.

The Social Change Program also includes strong informal components that make it an exceptional program and have contributed to its great reputation. First of all, the program has accepted participants from 12 countries of the Arab world, bridging the gap between the different linguistic and historical margins of the region. Not to mention that training modules take place in several Arab countries.

Moreover, the program is entirely run and presented in the Arabic language, which on the subject of Gender & Sexuality represents a pioneer effort for both knowledge production and knowledge consumption in Arabic.

The Social Change Program also brings together a healthy combination of various forms of activism, experiences, and fields of focus.

Finally the duration of the program, the hybrid personal/virtual contact, and the collaborative nature of the program leads to genuine network building. Participants get the chance to meet each other, learn about each others’ work, build friendships and alliances, learn from each other, and benefit from each others’ experiences for additional support and learning. As a result alliances and long term collaborations take place beyond the scope of the Social Change Program.

Though it is difficult and consuming to maintain these additional components, AFE strongly believes that these are extremely important assets to the program and therefore we do our best to ensure their success.