“Very successful” is how Sam Hudis described “Yalla, Building Bridges Between Arab Liberal Youth Movements”, which took place July 8-10, 2021, in Amman, Jordan. At a higher level, the concept of the event was to help creating a pan-Arab liberal youth network. The concept was to bring Arab liberal youths from across the region in contact with each other and the liberal ideology. In practice, this involved bringing together liberal youth from 4 participant countries, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt. Together the participants discussed liberal theory and also practical things such as organizational best practices and recruiting.
The seminar started off with the ideological background of liberalism. The session leaders encouraged discussion among participants, which led to discussions about the legacy of liberal ideas in the Arab world. This activity was followed by Mapping the challenges of Effective Youth Networking in the Arab world, Communicating liberalism in the Arab World, Redefining networking for Arab liberal youth, Online Networking and lastly, Developing Liberal Youth Networking Toolkit.
Hudis described two interconnected activities, the first activity discussed political mistakes, and the next one gave the rebound story. Hudis focused on American politics by first explaining how and why Hilary Clinton lost the presidential election and then in the following activity showing how the democrats managed to win the elections in 2020. Michel Nentwig, another trainer, focused on German politics by first explaining how the Free Democratic Party was voted out of parliament in 2013, and then in the following activity showing how they managed to regain votes in the following elections. Participants of the activity were also encouraged to tell failure and success stories of their own countries.
The seminar was “definitely a success” as the outcomes and expectations, especially of the participants, had been met. In the openings and introductions, participants were asked to write their expectations on sticky notes and post it on a wall; that way, it was clear what the participants wanted to get out of the seminar. At the end of the seminar, the participants were asked to remove the sticky note they had put up if the expectation written on it had been met. All but one sticky note was removed, further showing the success of the seminar.