Internship with Partners-Jordan

July 14, 2014

Journal Blog # 1

Ruba Hindi

Conf 370

3 credits (135 hrs)

Internship with Partners-Jordan, Amman-Jordan- First Blog

I just finished my first week of my internship for Conf 370 at Partners-Jordan, a non-profit organization and the regional office for Partners for Democratic Change and a member in the international network that comprise of 20 Partners-Centers located in different countries all around the World. The organization is committed to advance civil society, to promote mediation, to manage conflict and culture of change, and to encourage citizen participation in Jordan’s social and political development.

I am currently working closely with my site supervisor and other staff members who gave me the chance to observe their work and their objectives of promoting mediation as a profession in Jordan. It was interesting to observe one of their projects and their implementation in “Youth for Mediation as a Tool of Conflict Resolution,” where they establish university-based mediation service for the first time in two universities in Jordan. The program empowered university students with an alternative dispute resolution mechanism provided by skilled and trusted youth mediators working in the university premises. This project aims to create cultural awareness around mediation among youth with a high concentration of various tribal conflicts.

The third day, I attended a meeting with a representative from Ministry of Development to discuss the progress and issues that came up from their project in integrating anti-corruption practices on municipality level which aims to engage Community Based Organizations representatives, and government officials in selected rural areas with implementation of series of capacity building workshops. Moreover, he listed other projects they got involved in such as conducting training and awareness advocacy for women empowerment. I was really surprised when he started to list the small business that women started in the rural areas and how they supported them in order to market their products locally and regionally.

I am really excited about working with one of the NGOs at a developing country such as Jordan, since it will enhance my awareness on what platform they function, where and how they operate, and how constantly they strive towards change at the community level. However, it was a hard week since the office has to submit a new project about “Strengthening the role of Jordanian civil society in promoting human rights and democratic reform” sponsored by the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) and the deadline for submission was today July 13, 20014.

First of all, the whole office sat in for brain storming to try to formulate a policy which supports civil society in Jordan to strengthen democracy and human rights where the main priority is gender equality and women’s rights protection. Then, we came with a policy of “reforming and advocating for new inheritance rules and regulations that guarantee women’s right to access and benefit from her inheritance. Since number of discriminatory social norms against women are still at the heart of gender inequality in Jordan, especially within tribal customs dominance in the rural areas.

Afterward, we started to collect information and statics, and the office assigned me to edit the proposal. It was not an easy thing to do especially since it is the first time for me to do this kind of project, but I felt lucky that I took the community conflict class 330, and the environment policy making in developing countries class which helped a lot in understanding the concept of policy formulation and civil society. So, this challenge of learning a new skill aligned with my interest to learn the practical way of formulating a policy. And actually I ended up writing the whole proposal and everybody was so impressed of my work and my knowledge.

Posted by ruba hindi at 5:26 PM

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