Duration: April 2008 - March 2009

The program targets youth living in Sheki. The youth of Azerbaijan have long been plagued by complacency, ignorance and lack of resources and our project has striven and strives to make them more aware of their surroundings and the power they have for positive change. In the previous year through SYIC, we have made great strides in educating Sheki youth on civic responsibility. The current years project includes guest speaker sessions and documentary movie days, civic awareness teacher trainings in 10 surrounding villages and a young journalist program.

Objectives of the CAP are:

• Educate youth on political, world and civic issues and expand their minds about situations outside of their communities.
• To boost political participation and civil awareness of youth in rural areas and create a place where they can speak their minds and take active roles in their community.
• To foster widespread youth interest in politics through journalism and free press.

Goals of the Project:

• To raise civic awareness and political consciousness among the youth;
• Give an opportunity for youth to creatively express themselves through arts and help them to share their thoughts and ideas in their communities;
• To encourage and motivate youth for future contributions to their communities;
• Provide meaningful opportunities for youth to have constructive use of their time;
• Educate youth to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the communities in which they live;

Movie and Guest Speaker days

Every week there is a training and a discussion with a guest speaker or a screening of a film on a particular theme that is relevant to young people: gender equality, community service, education opportunities, rights and responsibilities of citizens, history of democratic movements, and human rights. During this period movies such as “Lightning. Nature Strikes Back”, “World Treasures” and historical film like “Tristian and Isolde”, “Alexander the Great”, “Anna & The King” and others were shown. On guest speaker sessions the participants were informed on different issues such as the historical background of tattoo, composting, learning disorders, hip-hop culture, presentations skills, racism and others. The Society anticipates roughly 30 participants ranging in age from 16 to 30 years.

Training for young journalists

During this program intensive journalism training was held for eight young journalists and 6 amateur youths. The specially selected group of young journalists participated in a three-month course taught by Eric Schwartz, an instructor at the International Center for Journalists who has edited several newspapers in the United States in addition to reporting for publications such as Boston, Business Journal, Moscow Times. As a part of the course the students published articles on their own dedicated page in a weekly newspaper and maintained a web site(www.shekiblog.org ), which includes a blog. The content of the blog and the newspaper page focuses on current events and politics of Sheki, as reported by the young journalists. As a success of the trainings it must be noted that five of the trainees are currently working at the post of a correspondent and other fields in a local television channel Sheki S.

Trainings in rural schools

During CAP implementation trainings on civic awareness in rural schools was provided in 6 more villages of Sheki. As a result of active participation of school teachers and their initiatives we are planning to provide additional trainings for some of the schools where teachers are interested in specific methodologies. Trainings will be provided according to the budget regulations. As it was noted in work schedule for the program, after the trainings are completed SYIC trainers will be doing follow up visits to those schools in order to track changes and help teachers to set up their clubs and assist them whenever needed.

Purpose:

• To increase civic and political knowledge of village teachers through the training;
• To add that information to the curriculum
• To start social clubs in the village on the basis of the trainings
• To involve the students in the political life of their communities through the participation in clubs