MENA-Innovates

About the Project:
While MENA’s youth literacy rates increase, the quality of education remains outdated and doesn’t prepare youth with the skills needed to compete for in demand jobs in the digital world. MENA-Innovates addresses this and helps improve youths’ digital literacy and increase their economic/employment opportunities by teaching them the skills dominating the latest industry development.

MENA-Innovates is a virtual program that aims to empower the MENA region’s youth with the 21st century and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) skills needed to become tomorrow’s innovators today. MENA-Innovates takes an innovative approach by combining 21st century skills development, digital development in coding, innovation and entrepreneurship, strategic thinking and creative problem solving. These skills are used to help students approach real-world problems within the scope of humanitarian, environmental, climate change, and social issues, as well as to promote their civic participation. 

This approach is designed to not only give youth the background knowledge of the latest in STEAM, but our approach empowers students with the technical skills that ensure their socioeconomic inclusion and ability to pursue graduate degrees and career opportunities within the field of stem/steam on a local, regional, and global level. In addition, to promote civic participation and community engagement, MENA-Innovates always incorporates a themed element which revolves around humanitarian and social justice causes, human rights, environmental awareness, climate change, and others. This approach allows us empower a diverse range of young learners while helping them learn how to critically address some of the challenges affecting their communities using their newfound skills. 

Targed Audience:

MENA-Innovates targets youth between the ages of 11-17 from across the Middle East and North Africa. Due to the virtual nature of the program, we are able to reach some of the most vulnerable and marginalized youth throughout the MENA region. 

Methodology:

MENA-Innovates adopts a participative bottom-up approach to ensure involvement with youth, local and global communities, and stakeholders across the public and private sectors at all levels. 

Along with our team of expert trainers and mentors, MENA-Innovates provides youth with the support needed to come up with innovative project ideas and initiatives that address a range of social, environmental, humanitarian, and economic issues. These ideas are open-ended to allow youth full creative control over the design and ideation of their projects, be they community campaigns, initiatives, videos, animation projects, interactive mobile and web applications, etc. 

Youth are encouraged to address issues that are relevant and meaningful to them and provided with the tailored capacity development and support that allows them to realize their full potential as changemakers innovating impactful solutions. 

After students have finalized their project ideas, they will be put into teams and provided incubation support, training, and mentorship to translate their ideas into actionable projects that are scalable and impactful.