“You are the key to change” project – Youth and Parliamentary Elections

    The “You are the Key to Change” project is an intensive dialogue sessions held in cooperation and partnership with the Phoenix Center for Informatics and Economic Studies and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, with the participation of young from different governorates of the Kingdom, during the two weeks preceding the parliamentary elections on November 10, 2020, 8 sessions that addressed various topics and themes related to the political participation of youth and their influence in the parliamentary elections, the sessions are held via the Zoom application due to the conditions related to the pandemic, Covid 19.

     The project stemmed from two main perspectives; the first is political development by strengthening active positive participation of youth, the second is a research study to analyze youth trends, attitudes, opinions and regarding participation in parliamentary elections.

      The titles and philosophy of the sessions reflected the effort to achieve this aim by building channels of dialogue among politicians and active officials in Jordanian political life on the one hand, and a group of youth presenting their visions, trends and questions to be discussed by others, two main objectives were achieved: the first is the sessions formed “focus groups”, the second is, dialogue between the two parts (politicians, officials, and youth) to bridge the gap that apparently obvious within the last years.

      The project was based on the problem of the clear tendency of a large faction of Jordanian youth to practice political stances and express different opinions through protest demonstrations only, without an attempt to transform into a long-term organized political action, whether through integration into political parties or pressure forces that express the Jordanian youth generation or even the formation of youth currents that participate in the political process, especially the parliamentary elections, in order to support the leadership elite that represents this generation.

At the end of the project, the Institute published a study on “Jordanian Youth and the Debate on Political Participation” based on the results of this project.