Local Initiatives
The Nation Building Movement, through its support for these initiatives, has worked to achieve two goals:
First,
working to enhance the concept of social responsibility, which has always been the movement’s message that it has sought to convey and enhance: through all its activities and events, as the movement has tried, by supporting such initiatives within its localities, to respond to the needs of local communities in these areas, which emerged through studying the need and reading the opportunities and challenges that civil activists worked on within the workshop in which they participated with the movement, and working with them to increase awareness in their local communities and advance them.
Secondly,
The practical application of the training in terms of the concepts and tools that were trained on in the workshop, and although these initiatives did not reach the level of real development initiatives, their added value was enhancing the awareness of local communities of the Local Administration Law and their participation in the map of the most prominent local resources and needs, and advocating for greater participation by them in the local administration environment and exercising their role in follow-up and monitoring accordingly.
The forms of these local community initiatives varied along three pillars, which are:
Training and capacity building
Local Dialogue
Artistic production
Training workshops, dialogue forums, a film and an interactive theatre were implemented, noting that the form of the initiative was chosen by local activists based on their vision and local knowledge. Ten initiatives were implemented within different localities that adhered to development standards that had to be worked on in order to support and achieve the project’s objectives.
The aim of the initiatives was:
- Motivating stakeholders and activists in civil society and youth activities in administrative units to play their role in raising awareness about the importance of community participation and citizenship in the local elections process, especially increasing awareness among the groups most distant from public affairs, namely women and youth.
- Promoting successful experiences of women’s participation in local councils as an indicator of the role women play in political work, in contrast to the traditional roles assigned to them.
- Motivating the youth group that suffers from frustration due to the current reality as a result of the lack of clarity of effective paths that this group may contribute to changing the reality.
- Raising awareness among target groups about local administration and the law regulating its work 107 and the spaces it provides, especially in terms of activating community participation and the rights and duties associated with this participation.
- Creating an interactive dialogue between local communities and local councils to bridge the gap of ignorance about the work of these councils and the mechanisms for activating popular oversight by transferring the expertise of elected members to voters and motivating them to propose solutions to the problems suffered by local councils.
Local Initiatives

Because we are able to build tomorrow
The initiative included implementing three dialogue sessions over three days in several areas of Aleppo.

Did you know?
The initiative included a five-minute theatrical performance that presented the idea of women’s limited role in local boards of directors, followed by an interactive dialogue session.

Will get back to you
The initiative included a dialogue session for a group of women (university students - breadwinners) to raise awareness of the role of local councils.

Talk to me about development and peacebuilding
The initiative included awareness sessions on the concepts of local administration, local citizenship development, and the laws regulating them.

Youth and local administration
The initiative included training aimed at focusing on the importance of the role of youth in building post-war Syria and the necessity of investing in young energies at all levels.

Fingerprint
The initiative included a dialogue space between a group of civil actors and former or current members of local councils.

Your plans are actions and your community is effective.
The initiative included training divided into two parts. The first part included awareness about Law 107, its objective, the mechanism for implementing these objectives, and the role of local elections.

Seed
An interactive dialogue session during which a set of concepts related to the general objective of the initiative were discussed and a space was created for dialogue between a group of parties concerned with the local development process.

We choose
The initiative included the production of a short film on local administration and the powers available to local councils according to Local Administration Law 107.

Youth and local administration
Training for a group of young people on their role in public life and the importance of informing them of the role of local councils, their working mechanism and their powers, whether in relation to all local issues that affect various segments of society