It’s already been a busy year at the AMEL Institute, where we’ve been building the knowledge and skills of thousands across Africa and the Middle East!
Sudan Democracy Action Project
With the goal to fill knowledge gaps so that young people could better play constructive roles in Sudan's historic democratic transition, we created the Sudan Democracy Action Project with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In just four short months of training (March-June), the project brought knowledge on the core concepts of civics and democracy to over 16,500 across Sudan using a multi-tiered strategy of live training sessions on social media and an original online course in Sudanese Arabic. To date, over 700 have earned certificates by completing the full course and are now serving as Ambassadors promoting the full course to others and leading offline training. The Ambassadors come from every state of Sudan, are primarily between the ages of 22 and 29, and are eager to run for political office, become public servants or hold government accountable through civil society activism.
Continuing these efforts and building upon this success, AMEL and NED are teaming up once again on a two-year program to engage the young people of Sudan in the constitution-building process. With the initiative kicking off in October, stay tuned for updates!
AMEL Institute Summer 2021 Program
Between July and September, more than 180 young leaders from over 100 cities, towns and villages across the Middle East and Africa took part in the AMEL Institute Summer 2021 program. The online training focused on human rights, activism safety/self-care, Holocaust and genocide history and prevention, conflict transformation, democratic development, nonviolent movement-building, gender mainstreaming and communications for activism.
Building upon curricula created by AMEL Institute during the past 3 years, the program included a mix of video lectures, quizzes, assignments and interactive discussions. Lecturers included professors Byron Bland and Larry Diamond of Stanford, as well as seasoned human rights advocates such as Nicholas Opiyo. Trainees were approximately evenly split between young men and women, with some participants identifying as gender queer. Averaging 27 years of age, trainees are at various points in their lives and careers, but all are taking some form of action to combat discrimination, persecution, indignities and inequalities in their communities.
All trainees will now join the AMEL Alumni Community, which was already 350 strong!