Exploring the society of a conservative town like Beddo was one of the most exciting experiences for the Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership And Rights Activation (PYALARA). The project was titled "Youth 4 Change," combining civic-political awareness raising, advocacy campaigning and the use of specialized youth media to lobby for the causes of young people in that area. During the first few meetings with a group of young girls from Beddo, they were extremely shy. By the end of the project, these same shy girls were out on the streets, filming reports and carrying out sketches on the issue they thought was most important to them: early marriage. A group of them presented the weekly episode of PYALARA’s youth TV programme Alli Sotak (Speak Up). Call-ins were generally from Beddo supporting their own daughters and expressing their somewhat changed opinions on early marriage. While no decrease in early marriage was noticeably visible thereafter, it was important that the young girls were able to speak out, and were listened to by their community.

Since its inception, PYALARA has been keen on activating the role of young Palestinians from all walks of life within the society. This is achieved through utilizing its specialized youth media and through catering for young people’s well-being, be it social, psychological, civic-political or physical health. Consequently, when young people are activated, empowered and granted opportunities, they can become influential actors of societal change.

Becoming role-models
PYALARA has developed its own intervention methodologies, which focus on securing the positive engagement of young people in action-oriented frameworks. Young people, through a series of interactive meetings, start to open up and express themselves in a warm and trustful environment; they learn the actual meaning of democratic participation and how to respect and cooperate with the majority decision. They obtain the necessary skills to carry their complaints, needs and rights from the level of verbal and vocal complaining to group-devised action plans where each individual has a role to play to bring about an element of change. They learn how to use the media (print and visual) as an advocacy tool and find themselves face to face with decision makers. After gaining all these skills and putting them into action, the empowered and action-oriented youth become role-models in their communities and are ready to be involved in the next stage of the project: advocates and monitors.

PYALARA is a non-governmental organization that was set up in 1999 to activate the role of young Palestinians according to their needs. It has two major scopes of work. First, to activate the role of young people through specialized media platforms and, second, to cater to the well-being of young people on different levels.

The organization publishes monthly The Youth Times which reaches more than 120,000 young readers all over Palestine. It broadcasts Alli Sotak, a weekly youth TV programme that airs on Palestinian TV and reaches over 300,000 viewers, mainly young people. Within this spectrum, PYALARA trains • on an annual basis • over 150 young Palestinians from different Palestinian areas on print and visual media within a child rights-based approach. PYALARA has also produced several short documentary films.

In building cadres of young people who will act as mentors for their younger peers, PYALARA has recruited in 2004 more than 300 university students who were trained, sent to the field to serve their peers, and became role-models for more than 4,000 young Palestinians aged 14-25 in peripheral and remote areas throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. PYALARA continues to run a youth-to-youth helpline, which last year responded to more than a thousand callers.