Skill-building for Unemployed Youth in Lebanon

Dear Friends,

Our year has been off to a great start.  Here are some updates and highlights:

-- We signed our first official partnership with PATCHI, a luxury chocolate brand here in Lebanon, which has committed to supporting about 20 of our youth this year!

-- We have recruited 6 new interns for the year, all who will support us in graphic design, social media, youth recruitment, mentor training, and marketing!

-- We have formed our first volunteers committee which includes high school students, university students, fresh grads, and young professionals.  This committee will be helping us plan Nawaya's biggest event at the end of summer.  

-- We held a Nawaya Day for several of our youth last month, where they learned Capoeira and attended a workshop about tolerance.

-- Several youth have been showcasing their skills and generating an income from it.  For example, Hovsep has been called in to perform at a few establishments, and our thai-boxers have been offering self-defense classes to the community to help them cover their expenses to Thailand (to attend the championships in a couple of weeks!)

More exciting events and news to come.  Thanks for your continued support and stay tuned!

Best regards,

The Nawaya Network

Dear Supporters,

Our NGO continues to grow, and we have some exciting new programs to share with you!

In September, we launched our professional networking program, whereby we invited young professionals from the community to meet and mingle with our youth. It was an enriching event for all, as everyone broke out of their bubble and met others they normally would not meet. Youth received insight and feedback about various issues, and our young professionals were quite inspired by our youth in return. We’re planning to hold these networking sessions more frequently in 2015.

In addition, we have also begun a series of workshops and trainings for our youth, which will be held on a monthly basis. For example, last Friday, a life-coach gave a very inspiring and stimulating session to another 15 youth in our program, whereby he discussed issues such as motivation, discipline, setting goals, and overcoming obstacles.

Furthermore, we have officially launched our e-mentoring program! Now, even if you live abroad, you can sign up to mentor our youth via a 45-minute session, covering a topic of your choice. It can be related to your career, lessons you have learned, obstacles you have encountered, or simply a chance to meet with and interact with our youth. If interested, sign up here!

In other exciting news, our first official documentary film about our young ballerina's trip to the US has been released online.  You can watch it here.

Finally, we have just launched our "200 Campaign" to get 200 generous donors to commit to donating just $10/month before the end of 2014, to help us expand our work to reach dozens more youth.  Will you consider being one of the 200?  You can sign up via the GlobalGiving site here.

We are always grateful for your ongoing support, and wish you all a happy holiday season, and a happy new year!

Best wishes,

The Nawaya Network

This past summer has been quite eventful for The Nawaya Network's youth!

In June, we planned a women's self-defense workshop given by two of our Thai-boxing champions, Ahmed (21 yrs) and Ramadan (6 yrs).  Participants loved it so much that they are requesting that they be organized more frequently.  This opportunity will provide these boys with much-needed financial support.

Nadine, our fashion designer, got a paid internship during her summer break at a design company called Vanina.  She has also been meeting with her mentor, Amani, and they recently spent 9 hours together in one day feeding the hungry.

Reine, our young ballerina, went to New York and New Jersey and attended a two-week intensive dance class.  It was a life-changing opportunity, and we captured it all in a short documentary film which we will be screening to the public for the first time on Wednesday, September 10th.  If you are in Beirut, please join us!  Invitation is below.

Some of our youth attended a workshop where they learned how to give trainings to the public.  This training of trainers approach will open up opportunities for them to offer classes, thus increasing their access to income-generation.

We have a very busy few months ahead before the end of the year.  Community service activities, capacity-building workshops, talent development sessions, mentor trainings, networking with young professionals, and more!  

We look forward to updating you again soon.  Thank you all for your support!

Many exciting developments over the last few months!  12 of our mentors were trained over a period of two days in April on how to be good role models, how to inspire our youth, how to motivate them during the tough times, and how to raise their self-confidence and sense of self-worth.  

Our trainers - a psychologist/educator and leadership coach got them so excited about mentorship that they couldn't wait to be matched!

Some matches have already been made:

13-year-old Rainy has been matched with a Red Cross Volunteer;

9-year-old Ahmed has been matched with a karate champion;

19-year-old Nadine has been matched with a physician;

15-year-old Rana has been matched with a pianist and a designer.

Other matches are still being made and will be highlighted in our next report.

In other news, some of our advanced youth have been trained on how to give workshops and training courses, as a way to secure an additional source of income for themselves.  For example, our thai-boxing champions, Ahmed and Ramadan, will be giving a women's self-defense training on June 11th.  

We believe that this will be a major boost for these two talented boys, who despite their major achievements and successes, are still largely unknown to the public. Check out their video here.  

We also are very excited to share with you the news that our 13-year-old ballerina, Reine, has been invited to attend a two-week dance camp in New York this July!  We have released a major campaign to spread the word about her story. Check out her two-minute video here.

Finally, Moe, our graffiti artist, was recently featured in a reality tv show on MBC!  Take a look here.

We are so proud of all our youth.  We knew they had what it takes to shine, all they needed was an extra push, some guidance, or simply the right opportunity.

Thank you for believing in our cause, and for believing in our youth!  Until next time!

Dear Supporters,

We recently launched a mentorship campaign to encourage people to become mentors for our youth.  Part of this campaign included releasing a 90-second video ad, which was a big hit!

The video reached 600,000 people on facebook, and was viewed 45,000 times in a matter of days.  As a result, many people have applied after being inspired to change the lives of our youth.

We are looking forward to a wonderful spring season here in Beirut, whereby we'll be training the mentors and matching them up with youth in our program for a period of 6 months to a year.

Check out the video on Facebook or YouTube, and take a look at some of our related images below.

In our next report, we will be sure to include photos of the mentor training sessions, along with pictures of the mentor-mentee matching day and orientation.

In other news, our youth have been hard at work building their skills and talents.  Mohammad, our 22-year-old grafitti artist was able to take some workshops with leading artists in Lebanon, while Rana was able to continue building her craft-building skills through an art workshop last month, as seen in the below photos.

Thank you again for supporting our youth!  We are excited about the next few months and look forward to sharing our successes with you again soon.

Links:

• Nawaya on Future TV
• Our Online Platform