Tamara Abu Laban

Synergos Social Entrepreneur & Founder, Women Make a Change

Tamara Abu Laban is the initiator of the project Women Make A change. The program aims to eliminate the stereotypes of women, and defy negative assumptions. Through using social media tools, the project empowers women and teaches them not to underestimate themselves. Women Make A change is a unique project that motivates women to speak up, to get their voices heard. Tamara and her team work with young people, both women and men. They believe that big changes come from young people, where men are supporters and women believe in their selves and capabilities, for a better future.

The effective and powerful tool here is the new media; therefore, young trainees first learn the methods of social media to change how the society views issues related to women through using social media campaigns. They learn how to write their stories, filming and editing. As part of this program the participants get to meet women who are pioneers in Palestinian society “successful leaders, interposers, politicians etc.”? they are exposed to a positive perspective especially around gender issues.

Tamara thinks that the most challenging part is that the youth participants are young people who come from marginalized areas where women’s rights are never addressed in their families or at schools. They come from patriarchal societies where many families oppress women. However, the goal of this program is to educate these youth in order to change their attitude and to transform them into women rights advocates.

The output of the training is when the participants make short films about women. This doesn’t only help them to realize how they have been changed but also helps to spread women successful stories around the communities to be role models for the rest of young women.

The youths who were special and showed their hard work during the training will be working as part time trainers giving the same training to other youth. Social media tools help these videos to reach more Palestinian people and not only Palestinians but; people in several parts of the world, which helps to alter the negative images and stereotypes of Palestinian women. In addition, this program will teach media skills to the youth to become significant part of their lives and most importantly; this creates job opportunities for them.

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