King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) Launches “New Voters”
The King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) and the Ministry of Education signed a cooperation agreement to implement the “New Voters” project, to enhance electoral awareness among public school students, encouraging them to participate in political participation in the future, and providing an introduction to democratic culture in a manner appropriate to their age phase.
The idea of the project, which is implemented in partnership with the Politics and Society Institute (PSI) is to provide a program for democratic education and culture which is considered an opportunity for the experimental practice of the electoral process on a programmatic basis through practical and realistic simulations, as well as an electronic simulation designed by the students themselves in the targeted schools through the Jordanian Games Lab, as part of a series projects implemented by the Institute in cooperation with the Fund to support and disseminate the outputs of the Royal Committee for the Modernization of the Political System.
The fund’s director, Saeb Al-Hassan, said that the project came to contribute to strengthening national efforts aimed to encourage political participation among citizens of all age groups, engaging them in the electoral process, assuming their responsibilities towards their future and bringing about the change they aspire to as they are a force for societal change.
Al-Hassan confirmed that since the beginning of this year King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) has launched a series of projects within the fields of awareness and education, which target the youth group to encourage them to engage in political life, in a manner that reinforces the political reform process in the Kingdom.
The project also targets students of the tenth and eleventh grades in government secondary schools in the regions: the north “Kasbah Irbid”, the center “Madaba” and the south “Al-Quwaira”.
In turn, the Executive Director of the Politics and Society Institute (PSI), Dr. Rasha Fityan, stressed that the project aims to raise awareness about the concept of election as the most important tool for democratic practice, educate participants about the concepts of public work and citizenship, the importance of Parliament and its involvement to Jordanian public affairs, and enhance their abilities and skills in dialogue, communication, persuasion, and the basics of campaigns, particularly advocacy campaigns. and to have the best tools to perceive the electoral data and programs, as well as to enable the target group to have the tools to convey the experiences they have gained to their peers and how to launch awareness-raising initiatives and campaigns. In addition to empowering and enhancing the capabilities of the targeted guides and teachers from the same schools to motivate students to launch sustainable political initiatives.
The project will train (80) male and female students that will motivate them to conduct and organize an electoral campaign for the virtual parliament with simulated lists from the students themselves with an electoral program focusing on priority issues and expanding the range of stakeholders in their student and family community and their town, leading to young leaders, candidates and new eligible voters as the first phase to parliamentary programmatic work based on lists.