ADVANCE:
An open and interconnected community for the development of Tunisia. CONTEXT
In these times of hardship, the need for meaningful and dignified ways for youth to engage in the development of Tunisia is stark. In MENA, geopolitics are changing fast; and in the face of ambition lays the fear that without profound cultural and economic transformations, new rounds of unrest and insecurit
y will destroy hope. Today, more than one third of the population is under the age of 18[1] and more than 30% of working age youth are unemployed[2] – one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. Furthermore, As many as 5000 Tunisians, most of them under 30, have joined extremist groups, placing Tunisia among the highest on the list of fighters with radical militant groups in the region[3]. At this critical juncture in our history, one viable path for contributing to the development of this country is to initiate movements, projects and actions led by engaged youths with the goal of advancing and developing Tunisia. Initiatives and creativity are motors for personal and local growth. Indeed, such actions can contribute largely in improving employability, reducing violence and bridging the gap between youth in different regions of the country;
Challenges for real change are threefold; While entrepreneurs face a heavy slant toward service provision and outsourcing, rather than consumer-facing product development paradigm, students go through a static learning experience suppressing creativity and innovative thinking. Socially, most of youths’ energy and willpower is wasted on unconstructive activities instilling in them a consumerist culture, instead of focusing on essential local and global issues. CONCEPT
At the National School of Computer Science (ENSI), students come from a panoply of social and cultural backgrounds. The context is rich in community and extracurricular activities. It allowed us and our peers to experience first-hand the importance and the impact of sharing and co-learning through workshops, trainings and projects. Despite of intense community work at ENSI, the impact is limited to the small population of its students. This fact is common to almost all the universities and schools in Tunisia. We thought of a way to bring forces together by uniting and engaging youths. Thus, Advance was born. Advance is a new concept of an open and interconnected community working on the development of Tunisia through reinforcing creativity, leadership and raising awareness. Advancers should be active, well trained and connected; Their role is to take action and initiative. They will organise workshops and training sessions as often as possible while keeping a networking and debating approach. A gamification system will reward those who carry out projects. In addition, for Advance to have the desired impact on Tunisia, the community has to be spread nation-wide. STRATEGY
Our strategy consists of five main points. To start, we will focus on forging an Identity through creating an appealing visual identity and turning ideas into concrete plans and consistent frameworks. Advertisement comes second, we will work on promoting our identity and activities through social media. Further, we will initiate Advance by launching sub-communities to start taking action and to shift from a knowledge hoarding culture to a knowledge sharing one. Initiatives will include meetings, networking sessions and projects including events; Advancers are rewarded based on the quantity and the quality of their activities and projects. Sharing and co-learning are the cornerstone of our action plan. Community members will elaborate workshops, trainings and MOOCs. Starting from a sub-community at ENSI, Advance will scale horizontally. This approach will make the quality of the work easier to assess and a web platform will unite all sub-communities together to make the workflow and the communication strategy more efficient.
