We organized the voting day for the villages of West Ramallah (Budrus, Qebia, Ni'lin, and Beitillo), on Wednesday the 26th of August, as part of the IBDA’ Youth Program-supported by DROSOS FOUNDATION, and in partnership with Ruwwad in the area.
During the implementation of the program, 20 young men and women from the West Bank received workshops, following these topics:
- Determining the needs and priorities of their community.
- Creative thinking in finding solutions to societal issues.
- Local financial and non-financial economy, and mobilization of local resources.
- Formulating ideas for initiatives and creating budgets, taking into account the benefit of the community, the use of local resources, and the environmental and social aspects, as well as the sustainability of the initiative.
After working with the initiatives, two were selected in the voting day by a committee of activists and academics in the West Ramallah area. With a voting percentage of 75% for the committee, and the remaining 25% for public voting through our Facebook page.
These were the initiatives:
- Studio Online: A studio for media production tailored to local NGOs, companies, and stores, in addition to filming social events such as weddings. The studio will also support the other initiatives in the IBDA’ program in this region.
- Al-Baydar Mill: The idea of the project is to provide a thyme mill for the village of Beitillo for merchants of thyme in the region, considering that there are a good number of women working in this field, as they expressed how difficult and costly it is to find transportation, thus having to go to the nearest mill in Ramallah city.
- Dar Sidi: A restaurant and café for all community members, especially young men and women that serve local food, drinks, and homemade sweets in the village of Ni’ilin.
- Basar: An initiative that mainly aims to spread awareness on visual health in the community, and provide the service to the largest possible number of people in the region, especially those who suffer from problems with their eyesight. In addition, the initiative provides an opportunity for graduate opticians to enhance social and practical abilities.
The final voting result was in favor of Studio Online and Al-Baydar Mill.
It is important to mention that Dalia, in cooperation with several partners, will support the other initiatives through crowdfunding.
