DEMOCRACY & GOVERNANCE

• Court Coverage Training: USAID’s Media and Rule of Law projects cooperated in training 18 local journalists on media and legal aspects of court coverage. Trainers explained about the legal system in Palestine and the restrictions on media coverage of courts. Trainees shared their experiences and talked about obstacles they faced in approaching courts, mainly the banning of coverage of cases. The trainees prepared reports as part of their training. The reports will be published or broadcast, and many of them will be posted on the Justice Council’s webpage and the media project’s webpage.
  
  
• Building the Capacity of SJC Court Administrators: USAID’s Rule of Law project (Netham) trained 60 Supreme Judicial Council court administrators in Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nablus on utilizing the USAID-donated case management software including generating and analyzing reports produced by the case flow database. Trainees were introduced to the USAID-developed Notification Management System that is currently being piloted in the Ramallah Notification Department. All court administrators throughout the West Bank will take part in this capacity building training. Future trainings for all court administrators will include unified court procedures and customer relations training.

EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

• Two Youth-Led Initiatives Launched: Two youth-let initiatives were launched. “Hopes” initiative works with young people with special needs to include them in the community by working on their talents with the help of young psycho-social workers and artists. There art work is then exhibited. Art training is accompanied by career counseling and life skills training to help participants find jobs or start businesses. The “Sports bring us together” initiative organizes competitions for individual sports, where youth participate and best players are nominated for awards.
  
  
• Media Training in Support of Youth Development Resource Centers (YDRCs): 17 youth recent graduates in media participated in a 10-day training workshop in support for media centers in YDRCs in the West Bank. USAID developed the YDRCs as part of the U.S.-Palestinian Public-Private Partnership Initiative. Training covered writing media reports, news oral reporting and reportage, and training on Photoshop software.