MIFTAH
Thursday, 28 March. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

As part of the project “Supporting Women’s Active Leadership Roles in Local Government Units” implemented by MIFTAH in partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and upon initiative from women local council members in the Ramallah and Al Bireh district, female participants completed a workshop aimed at developing communication skills and promoting their leadership roles within local councils. This was through strengthening computer skills and report writing. The workshop was held over a period of two days at the Cultural Center Hall in Al Bireh.

Participant feedback

President of the Qarawet Bani Zeid Women’s Society Club Sahar Arar says the training was a ‘quantum leap’ for her. “It was an extension of other MIFTAH trainings which contributed to empowering us as women”, she said, adding that the importance of acquiring skills such as computer use, report writing and methods of correspondence is that they were not available before. “Things are different today. Now we have these skills and we can use them to boost our abilities and our potentials,” Arar maintains.

An answer to their needs

Meanwhile, Bisan Nofal, media coordinator for Ramallah/Al Bireh women local council members’ network believes the significance of the training lies in how it responds to the demands of the participants themselves. This is with the knowledge that most of the women had no real knowledge of computer use or the internet, which hindered their active communication with their surroundings and limited their leadership abilities at the community level. That is why they had requested in previous meetings to be given computer courses so they could improve their communication skills.

Nofal continues, “The women learned the basic uses of a computer such as setting up their personal email accounts. And since we are becoming such a fast developing society in technology, it was imperative that they took this course. This way the members would also be introduced to the world of social media.”

Nofal says she benefited just as much as the other women. “The course opened up a window to the outside world for me. I now have an email account and Facebook account. I suddenly know news about the world.”

Acquiring skills and improving performance

Arij Riziq, member of the Beit Liqya local council said the report writing course was beneficial for all the council members because it ‘contributes to developing their performance and acquiring the necessary skills as leaders in their communities.”

Riziq also recommended that council members should gain other skills such as proposal writing so they would be able to better present projects for their communities. In addition, she said they must learn more about the local council law because it is what determines the rights and obligations of each person. With a better knowledge of the law, the members will be better equipped to defend their rights, Riziq said.

Abdel Rahman Tamimi: mechanisms of report writing

Director of the Hydrologists Society Abdel Rahman Tamimi, who supervised the second day of training said the participants received basic skills in report writing methods which help to avoid generalization and typicality in writing and how to benefit from feedback.

Tamimi stressed on the importance of the training in terms of documentation, since it is one of the main pillars of any successful organization. He also said they learned the importance of focusing on the institution as a whole instead of the individual, adding that they needed follow up training courses since report writing was an acquired skill. Tamimi maintained there is currently a lack of good report writing skills, where content is often sacrificed for eloquent but empty language; another problem, he maintains is that reports are often typical and general. He added that English courses were also necessary so the members could better communicate with donors.

In her assessment of the training workshop, computer trainer Yasmin Salman said for most of the participants, the training was the first step in handling computers. “They learned the very basics of computer processing such as Word and Excel, how to set up accounts and then send and receive emails.”

Projects Manager Najwa Yaghi said through this intervention, MIFTAH looked to highlight the leadership roles of some local council members. She said MIFTAH wanted to motivate the women council members to overcome the challenges they face at the administrative and logistic level, which could often hinder development to their performance inside their councils.

 
 
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