Palestinian Youth Strategy

About LPDC’s Youth Strategy

What are the right questions we should be asking about the conditions and prospects of the Palestinian youth in Lebanon today?

This was the initial question that kick-started LPDC’s project with the Palestinian youth back in 2016. It had evolved from other questions such as: What can we, as LPDC, do for the Palestinian youth in Lebanon?  What can the youth do? What are they doing already? What are the stakeholders involved in youth matters doing? What are they not doing? What are we doing and what should we stop doing?

This strategy aims to function as an overarching umbrella that brings together stakeholders working with the Palestinian youth, in order for the vision, efforts, and resources to be aligned, coordinated, and optimized. We hope that it serves as a solid strategy towards improvement, and that it contains insights that will not only establish directions for working towards change but that will inspire the youth to be an active part of this change.

This strategy is different from the existing youth strategies on the following main points:

•LPDC’s unique position as an advisory body in the Lebanese government.

•Inclusion of the Palestinian Higher Council for Youth and Sports and UNRWA in the strategy’s Steering Committee, and hence backing the strategy with the support of the three bodies that officially represent the interests of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

•Ensuring youth participation and representation in the preliminary research, the development of the strategy, the framework of action, and in the continuous feedback mechanisms.

•Ensuring the participation of youth from all representative political factions, as well as independent youth clubs and networks in the youth Reference Groups.

•The strategy is based on thorough research conducted over more than two years with the Palestinian youth and stakeholders; the focus areas are thus developed on this basis rather than on donor trends.

•This strategy is not an end-product; it is a continuous work in progress based on the needs and input of the youth.

•A main component of this strategy is that it is suggesting a framework of action for its implementation, which avoids the strategy to end up merely on papers.

•The suggested framework of action ensures that all areas of action are being advanced at the same time.