AMEL Institute - Sudan
The Sudan Democracy Action Project
Initial Phase (2019-20)
In 2020, AMEL launched a project in Sudan with the aim of engaging young people in Sudan's historic democratic transition. The project began with development of an original training curriculum in Sudanese Arabic covering human rights, rule of law, and other key democracy topics.
In just four short months of training (March-June 2021), 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. In the initial phase over 700 earned certificates by completing the full course and began promoting the full course to others. Alumni of the program 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.
Second Phase (2021-23)
Continuing these efforts and building upon this success, AMEL kicked off two-year program in October 2021 to engage the young people of Sudan in democracy- and constitution-building processes. Among other milestones and activities, the program:
provided democracy lessons on social media reaching hundreds of thousands all over Sudan;
trained over 300 Sudanese in human rights, rule of law, combating impunity, conflict transformation, constitution-building and democracy via online and off-line methods;
held consultations with Alumni and experts on critical knowledge gaps about democracy;
developed a new 10-part online training course about democracy in the Sudanese context;
researching resistance committees and other key democracy and conflict issues.
In October 2023, a third phase of the program launched. Consolidating and expanding the impact of previous phases, the year-long 2023-24 Sudan Democracy Action Project is continuing to build the knowledge and skills of young Sudanese while also developing new pathways for impacting the bigger international picture. In particular, the project:
Has created the Sudan Democracy Lifeline Fellowship, a new non-residential fellowship for select Sudanese activists, who are being empowered to produce a variety of research and analytical products, including articles, papers, and online panel discussions that will help to inform issue education efforts;
Is utilizing the two online training curricula developed during previous phases to train approximately 500 young activists on issues related to human rights, rule of law, peace, justice, and democracy;
Launched an initiative to engage the international community on lessons learned and best practices for more effective engagement with community-led groups in Sudan;
Is creating an online workshop series for select Sudanese activists on more effective engagement with the international community, including training and coaching aimed at better understanding dynamics in the international community and building their communication and advocacy skills.
