Our Story

With 60% of the population under 30, youth in the Arab world are considered the largest age group among the Arab population. However, Arab societies still lack the proper structures for organizing youth activism, whether through volunteerism, youth activities, or networking opportunities. In addition, many obstacles face youth mobilization in the Arab countries as they are particularly affected by unemployment, deteriorating public education, and gender oppression.

Despite all these factors, Arab youth represent a great potential for the region and it is important to give them the chance and space to mobilize and invest their energies to take part in their communities, as they can be a huge and powerful resource with their creativity, energy, and forward thinking.

TakingITGlobal believes that young people need further inspiration, information, and involvement — key ingredients for effective participation in their communities and in the world. Youth are not apathetic by nature, they are simply uninspired. They lack information about issues, and a personal connection or imperative for action. And once inspired, youth lack a pathway to action — they lack a comprehensive, easy to navigate way to get information on opportunities for involvement, events to participate in, funds to access, networks to join, and other youth to involve in their work. In addition, youth are rarely meaningfully involved in policy development and therefore lack the framework, support and legitimacy for sustained action.

Since the launching of TIG Arabic website in 2004, we have worked hard to encourage more and more youth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to utilize our online community tools and spaces such as blogs, Panorama, Global Gallery, discussion boards, resources and action guides. The utilization of our online tools will eventually lead to raised awareness of local and global issues affecting youth, and increased participation in their communities. Above all, the youth's engagement in our platform will create a culture of dialogue and understanding between them and other youth around the world.

With increasing numbers of members from the MENA region and continuous requests from active youth for more intervention in the region, TakingITGlobal and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina realized the importance of creating a hub and mentorship platform for youth-led development projects in the Arab world, through providing online and offline tools and spaces as well as mini-grants and scholarships. Therefore the need for Youth for Change became evident and the venture began with a pilot in 2008 targeting 10 Arab countries, which then progressed to phase II in 2009-2010 with the focus on " Global Youth Culture and Participation" increasing the target to 14 Arab countries. Local organizations were indentified for cooperation on the ground level in each country, to ensure the success and support of the youth.

After the success of phases I and II, together with the feedback we received from the program participants in various activities conducted, TakingITGlobal and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina were determined to move along with the program and build upon the main components of the previous phases in addition to focusing on the theme "Dialogue and Mutual Understanding-Take Action". This new focus comes in parallel with the theme of the Year of Youth 2011 and stems from our belief that youth in the MENA region should understand more the importance of dialogue on a local, regional and global level as well as build their skills to take more action in their own communities. Phase III has also expanded to include all 22 Arab countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, and Yemen.