IT4Youth - Palestine

IT4Youth introduces computer-based IT to young Palestinians (ages 11 to 24) in rural and underserved areas of the northern West Bank. The programme is intended to enhance participants' learning skills and employability, thereby improving quality of life. Addressing young people where they learn and play, the programme makes computer-based IT accessible to both in- and out-of-school youth. Through formal and informal training, and using active learning techniques, young people learn computer basics, Internet skills, and more advanced computer applications, both at school and at community-based centres. Specifically, the programme involves the following components:

• Providing hardware (computers and peripherals) and software to schools with existing computer laboratories
• Building new labs and renovating older ones
• Establishing a Regional IT Centre (RITC) that houses a youth IT club. This programme component is designed to enable young people to connect with each another and play a positive role in community building using the centre's IT training room (14 computers) and free computer use room (12 computers). The RITC serves 11 villages and rural communities in the regions of Nablus and Jenin
• Equipping teachers to teach IT in the classroom and use IT in subjects such as mathematics, science, and languages; enhancing the skills of youth trainers
• Emphasising girls' education and training
• Strengthening young people's life skills, such as creative and critical thinking, through after-school programmes
• Developing and adapting Futurekids, a youth-centered technology curriculum, for use in public schools (through collaboration with the Palestinian Ministry of Education) and designing IT centre-based training curricula
• Providing vocational training for unemployed youth
• Raising community awareness about the IT4Youth programme and building the capacity of local partners (please see Partners section, below) and youth managers to ensure the programme's long-term sustainability.

While the use of IT for education and learning is a key focus, fostering young people's creativity is central to the programme as well. Boys and girls daily who come to the RITC from poor neighbourhoods and refugee camps to play with computers and digital technologies to create music, art, and other entertaining projects. According to the project director from Welfare Association, Majed Abdulfattah, "the youth at the Clubhouse are innovating, not imitating."

IT4Youth also draws on its website, which is available in English and Arabic, for information and experience exchange on the part of young people living in the West Bank and Gaza. This website includes such features as an online job bank, which is designed to connect skilled young people with available jobs, and discussion forums.

Youth, Technology, Education, Economic Development.

According to InterAction, poverty levels in the West Bank have risen sharply since the beginning of the current Intifada, due to the deterioration in security and the consequent effects on the Palestinian economy. An estimated 60% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are currently living in poverty, compared with 21% in 2001. The region's growing poverty directly impacts the youth, who represent a majority of the population, and who are experiencing diminishing prospects and opportunities for gainful employment. 90% of Palestine's adolescents are ineligible for entry to university, and vocational training reaches only 6% of high schools students (who tend to live in urban areas. The state-sponsored school curriculum only includes computer studies for a very limited number of youth, with the ratio of computers to students standing, as of early 2004, at 1:188.

IT4Youth recognises that addressing young people's needs is central to creating conditions for an enduring peace in the region. Organisers say, "Palestinian youth who are equipped with critical skills and training can play a vital role in such efforts, by strengthening the economic and social fabric of their communities, and contributing to a more peaceful and stable Middle East."