Peace Hack MENA 2017

The Peace Hack MENA camp is a co-created initiative by the Swedish Institute, Icealex, and the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community.

Our goals are:

• To create new, collaborative and creative methods for social innovation and peace building
• To familiarize the civil society and tech industry with makers, innovator and social entrepreneurs
• To actively look for added value in innovation hubs, maker spaces and co-working spaces for social innovation and peace building
• To recognize the role of collaboration, networks and technology as central to modern human interaction and as an opportunity for innovating new methods and solutions for co-existence and peace building.

The participants will get an opportunity to showcase how innovation hubs and community spaces through shared community ownership; can be examples for promoting co-existence, diversity and social innovation.

Methodology:
During Peace Hack MENA the ‘Art of hosting technique’s’  will be applied as a general framework for the camp to enable a collaborative process with all participants. With their cross-cutting expertise of open source tools, ICT, media among others, all participating hubs will be able to discuss and show how these expertises can enable community interaction, shared ownership, and the co-creation of solutions to social challenges.

Focus Area:
Social Innovation, Peace building, Diversity & Co-existence, Social Entrepreneurship.

A Historical Nutshell About #PeaceHackCamp:

Peace-Hack-Camping is an ICT4D action bringing tech and social innovators, peacebuilders and open culture activists together to jump-start and promote new forms of learning and collaboration to support peacebuilding & innovation processes.

The #PeaceHackCamp is an intensive inter-communal social innovation project that taps into open source tools, ICT, media among others for their ability to promote collaborative enterprise in learning and innovation, foster mutually beneficial interaction among communities, enable shared ownership and effectively distribute gained knowledge.

Supported by the Global Innovation Gathering, the 1st two #PeaceHackCamps in Juba, South Sudan & Bogota, Columbia featured activities from coding and app creation, to hands-on DIY solar power generation, to the use of wikipedia and open knowledge resources to support literacy and education, to Open ICT in agriculture and community economic development, to life skills and holistic empowerment for women to the use and training in social media for conflict mitigation. With the aim to promote open technologies and social innovation as key peacebulding mechanisms the #PeaceHackCamp has the potential to bring into focus these elements of civil society development as forms of empowerment that reach beyond social & political pressure.

Selection Procedure:
We aim to attract practitioners who are operating and managing innovation spaces, maker spaces, co-working spaces, and community spaces and have designed and implemented successful programs that create community engagement and bring social innovations into reality for tackling grassroots local challenges.
How to Apply:
Fill in and send us the application form to: [email protected] before 15th of April 2017 (23:59)

Selection will be based on the following:

• You are from a relevant organization or group relevant to the camp idea
• You are confident about communicating in English Language
• You are in the age group 15-40
• You are from the MENA region: ”Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco”
• You are available from 21-24^th of May, 2017
• You can think outside the box and are open to collaboration
• You are passionate about social innovation

Cost of participation:
Swedish Institute Alexandria will cover all your relevant costs for participation (hotel / flights / food etc.) Swedish Institute Alexandria will facilitate your visa process as soon as we confirm your participation through issuing a visa request letter.

Background:
In response to the UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on young people’s role in the peace processes the Swedish Institute Alexandria together with Global Shapers and Ice Alex are launching the first Peace Hack MENA conducting a with the aim to increase the participation of young people from different backgrounds in finding new solutions for Peace Building. The Peace Hack MENA taps into showing the best practices of Innovation Hubs & Community Spaces as melting pots for creating Empathy and fostering Co-existence, Diversity, and Social Innovation. The PHM will be a 3-days intensive workshop during May 21-23^rd, 2017 to crowd-source learning insights, experiences in generating social innovations for co-existence across different types of hubs, spaces and local contexts with a particular focus on peace-building. The 4th day (24th May) will be an open event with the aim of interacting and networking with the larger community. This will be designed by the participants.

The activity will be jointly coordinated by:

• Javeria Rizvi Kabani, Deputy Director, [email protected],  Swedish Institute Alexandria
• Ahmed Bastawy, [email protected], IceAlex Alexandria
• AbdelRahman Gafaar, [email protected], The Global Shapers Hub Alexandria

For information regarding applications and details about the Future Forum activity contact:

Email: [email protected]

For media queries contact: 

Samah Sukkar, [email protected]
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SwedAlexOrg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SwedAlex

Dalia Elbadry, [email protected]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icealexHub/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/icealexHub
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icealexhub/
Join the conversation – Use the hash tag: #PHM2017