USAID Ma3an Year Three, Quarter Three Performance Report

Despite the country's deteriorating economic and political climate, compounded by one of the world's highest COVID-19 infection and death rates per capita, the Ma3an team increased youth participation in civic and political life, and addressed youth grievances to help prevent radicalization in Tunisian communities vulnerable to violent extremism. The Ma3an team refurbished and equipped the Le Kram youth center in one of the most underserved communities in Tunis, providing a multi-disciplinary sports field, a multipurpose auditorium, an IT lab and recording studio, as well as a civil society resource center. This safe space enables an additional 400 of Kram's youth to engage and integrate into civic, social, and professional life and contribute positively to their communities' development activities. The Le Kram youth center is one of 47 safe spaces the Ma3an team is refurbishing across Tunisia by the end of Year 3 to help prevent youth from engaging in extremist activities. In Q3, Ma3an organized 46 capacity-building training, workshops, mentoring, and learning sessions with a focus on strengthening local partners' and CSO's programmatic and organizational capacities. Ma3an provided training to 15 out of 16 Phase 3 local partners to capacitate them to facilitate the CYM process and to deliver the Youth Mapper training to selected youth. After these trainings, Phase 3 partners launched the CYM fieldwork, starting with the two days in which Youth Mappers produced communities' maps and filled an observational checklist and a questionnaire to identify community needs. Ma3an engaged in a partnership with the Presidency of the Government on the AZIMA (Determination) project, a program designed to prevent the further spread of COVID-19 and promote the ongoing vaccination campaign through public outreach campaigns implemented by youth across Tunisia. The AZIMA project has an important youth component, whereby over 1500 Tunisian youth are trained and supported under the Ma3an project. The AZIMA training will focus on how to register on the EVAX vaccination platform and will explain the steps of registration for people of concern in the highest priority groups to register and access vaccination across Tunisia. Youth Mentors of Cohort 2 completed 88% of their planned activities across Phase 2 communities. Seven Storytelling, five L2D, and nine PIS training engaged 177 youth and 163 youth benefitted from one-on-one or small group mentoring sessions with Youth Mentors. To accommodate the unstable COVID-19 sanitary situation, 24% of their trainings were conducted in-person and 76% were held virtually compared to 35% and 65% respectively during the last quarter. Youth Mentors achieved a nearly balanced ratio of male to female participation in 21 trainings (40% males and 60% females). Ma3an has also made considerable progress in engaging with the Ministry of Education (MoE) to revise the civic education curriculum and introduce a Youth Community Service program (YCS) in schools. Ma3an's Civic Engagement Expert completed the adaptation of the YCS curriculum to the Tunisian context to complete the handouts that go with the YCS Curriculum, which aims to raise awareness and provide knowledge to youth about civic participation and the value they can bring to one's community. Ma3an launched a National Level APS (Annual Program Declaration) to implement P/CVE activities across 24 governorates. Through this APS, Ma3an intends to add to its existing activities and local partnerships by supporting CSOs and businesses in different regions of Tunisia to conduct contextualized initiatives that have a "national impact" to engage young people, individuals, informal groups, coalitions, and/or the media on P/CVE initiatives. In addition, Ma3an published a Community Level (APS) to support local community initiatives that advance positive youth development; increase youth civic engagement; and strengthen local capacities and led solutions for preventing violent extremism. Under this APS, Ma3an is targeting the youth population aged 18 to 29 and will cover interventions in 17 vulnerable governorates.