Lebanon

The curriculum’s three DVDs, dubbed in Arabic, use the voices of well-known actors from Jordan and the region to share new concepts in a familiar idiom. The curriculum includes a training handbook and three guides that provide interactive, scenario-based activities. Examples of participatory and democratic learning throughout the curriculum enable human rights and democracy activists, educators, women leaders, and facilitators to learn how to implement successful advocacy campaigns, communicate effectively with the media, and train trainers.

Working together in the workshop setting, diverse groups of refugee women learned to recognize their own leadership capabilities and empowered themselves to improve the quality of life in the refugee camps, enhance their status as refugees in their hosts countries, and address conflict resolution and peace-building in their home countries.

From September 5 to October 21, 2005, a group of 14 experienced leadership trainers from Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine participated in a five-week prototype Arabic eCourse to test and adapt the Arabic curriculum in preparation for a full eCourse in 2006.

Once women come to realize that they can have a say and that working together brings power, countless ideas and civic organizations come about, said exiled former Iranian Minister Mahnaz Afkhami during an international meeting of non-governmental organizations to discuss the empowerment of women in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.