Youth Community Empowerment Program (YCEP)

Program Overview

Program Overview

The Youth Community Empowerment Program (YCEP) promotes tolerance and conflict mitigation among the youth of Lebanon. Supported by the Global Opportunities Fund of the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office and implemented by IREX and IREX Europe, YCEP is building the capacity of Lebanese grassroots civil society and facilitating community mobilization projects to strengthen elements of civil society that seek to promote ethnic and religious tolerance among diverse communities.

KEY OBJECTIVES

Build the capacity of youth-oriented community service organizations (CSOs) through mentoring and hands-on workshops
Support the implementation of issue-based CSO projects that mobilize youth and bridge sectarian divides in diverse communities

Convene a youth-focused conflict resolution retreat for CSOs

Project Activities

IREX is training six youth-led, youth-focused organizations in areas that enhance their capacity to design, implement, and manage conflict mitigation projects with community mobilization approaches. These organizations require significant institutional support and programmatic skills training.

Through mentored grants, CSO projects engage diverse groups of youth who hail from communities with histories of sectarian and ethnic tension. Community projects focus on participatory group activities – repairing a school, planting trees, creating joint works of art – that mobilize youth from different backgrounds to work towards a common goal.

A national retreat will bring together an array of CSOs from different regions, empowering them to share local and issue-based expertise, disseminate best practices, and build professional networks on conflict mitigation techniques.

Grantees

YCEP is providing close support and mentoring to the following CSOs and their project ventures:

Youth for Tolerance (Y4T) – Southern Suburbs of Beirut
The Student Swap project fights prejudice among teens from various sectarian backgrounds.
Beeatoona – South Mount Lebanon (Aley)
The Green Lebanon with Peace project promotes peace building in divided communities through environmental activities.
SADA – West Bekaa (Jeb Jennine)
The Draw to Build project builds conflict mitigation techniques among youth through drama and art.
SAWA – Bekaa (Baalbak)
The Together We Reconstruct project promotes a culture of acceptance through theater productions.
We Love Tripoli – Tripoli
The We Love Tripoli project promotes teamwork, volunteerism, and citizenship through an online volunteer management database.
Khota Al-Shabab – South Mount Lebanon (Aley)
The United…Never Again Divided project aims to bridge sectarian divides among youth from Druze and Christian communities by reviving the storytelling (Hakawati) tradition in the area.

Program Contact

For more information about YCEP email newsroom@irex.org.