User:Madda88/I-Dare for Sustainable Development

Introduction

I-Dare for Sustainable Development, commonly known as I-Dare, is both [non- for profit]] and non-governmental organization. Based in Amman, Jordan, I- Dare aims at propelling and bringing up a positive behavioral and cognitive change in the region, on a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean scale. Born in 2013, I-Dare provides alternative - thus, non-formal and for that reason creative - approaches to enable and encourage youth to be the premise for and the catalyst of a sustainable motion, in better words, a positive sustainable change, with which to vest the community. Indeed, on a holistic extent, I-Dare envisages a community engagement, and a community participation in terms of public responsibility and civic awareness, through a Positive Youth Development (PYD).

The organization promotes both virtual and real, tangible spaces for youth to find self-expression, self- confidence, self- promotion and to be active agents of a social, political and economic transformation. I-Dare ventures to provide the cognitive and pragmatic assistance for youth to discern themselves and the reality around.

Through the partnerships that annually establishes and the related projects, I-Dare dares to help the people to be: to be peacefully involved in society, thus to contribute peacefully to its evolution.

Vision and Mission

I-Dare calling

I-Dare is ontologically committed and teleologically focused on youth agency and community resilience. The organization acts in favour of youth empowerment essentially, and social activism and active citizenship as desirable results. Through social marketing campaigns and projects, I-Dare wants to galvanize mental youth autonomy. In this regard, it puts its efforts in challenging traditional visions and interpretations of reality in order to foster youth critical thinking and youth mental activism. Communicating, debating, questioning in order to generate, share and exchange sustainable but innovative potential, be it intellectual or practical one. The long-term objective is to support youth to acquire self-awareness, to trust their own opinions, thus to feel confident within society, being willing to spread their own voices but being equally willing to hear from others. Nevertheless, to understand that all opinions are respectable but no one is indisputable truth. I-Dare wants to cultivate and to advocate youth sense of entrepreneurship, making youth acknowledge and manage their own potential. The organization offers a place to think outside the box. It wishes people to take initiatives and to be creative. The mental and ethical reinforcement I-Dare promotes, is a non-conventional way to equip youth both against violent extremism inclinations and in favor of love speeches. Through online and offline campaigns of alternative narratives, the main goal is to cognitively empower people, to accustom them to look for a wider picture of reality, to seek for new versions, to never hover over alternative perspectives and to actively project themselves into the future. I-Dare safeguards individuality from individualism.

Behind an activity of emancipation of the individual, there is the intention of constructing the notion of community, of a sense of belonging to a diverse environment where projects of self-determination align with rules of pacific coexistence and social ethic. The intention is to envisage a society made of communities where people are active participants, co-agents and co-builders, but equally, co-beneficiaries of their present. Community resilience is what I-Dare stands up for, to enable people to feel inhabitants, not guests of the earth, to think from their past, to act in their present but to focus on their future, in order for the change to be positive and sustainable. The concept is that everyone has the chance and the ability to contribute to a social and communitarian design. Every human has the right and duty to improve him/herself, to perfection him/herself, to look for his/her own expertise and to implement a positive impact around. Society I-Dare alludes to, is an active nucleus of humans that feel bonded with and responsible for it: a society that is not passive, annihilated but integrated, participative and non-aligned to a major cultural and ideological structure. I-Dare challenges pre-wrapped systems and discovers new ones.

Values

I-Dare Identity

• Humanity

I-Dare is a community based values organization. It believes in a social prospective. It stands for a reality where people have equal duties and equal rights. I-Dare believes in humanity. It names no race but that of humans. It sides with no belief but that of positive peace.

• Positive peace
• Activism
• Communication
• Dialogue

The notion of positive peace recalls concepts such as activism and communication as pillars of I-Dare action. According to I-Dare, activism is precept for the concept of democracy, of sense of citizenship and that of public opinion whereas communication is premise for, and instrument of, knowledge and dialogue. Through communication as human encounter I-Dare commits to enable a learning process whose dynamics are not top-down but horizontal. The idea is to create the spatial and cognitive opportunities for a mutual exchange of growth, together. No one is in the position of teaching; everyone is in the position of sharing, though.

• Alternative Narratives
• Critical Thinking
• Mental Autonomy
• Freedom of expression
• Youth empowerment and agency (entrepreneurship)

I-Dare’s communication has no labels, no definitions, no judgments, and no instilled frameworks. Its messages are alternative interpretations, alternative views, introduced not as impositions but as additional narrations to the mainstreamed ones. There is no intention to channel or direct people towards an image of reality. There is the intention to expand the offer of public contents and to let people free to decide. Indeed, I-Dare formula is to trust, even to foster critical thinking and freedom of choice. I-Dare simulates the “Sapere Aude” concept of will to convey the courage to think, to break the silence, to dare to know and to dare to look for answers. Behind this, there is the expectation of human positive capability to take charge of their own life and destiny, to take advantage of time and to decide, being conscious each decision has social effects and social aftermaths. There is the intention to support youth in freedom of expression and in freedom to be who they want to be. In this regard, I-Dare provides a “Daring- Hub” space where youth can express themselves, venturing on how to be entrepreneurs and promoters of a positive personal and social change.

• Creativity
• Awareness
• Initiative
• Diversity
• Multiculturalism

Once again, faith in humankind keeps being the guiding light of I-Dare action. Through social and personal awareness, humans can achieve greatness. Indeed, they need to feel that necessity of change. I-Dare is there to support that call. Therefore, it is meant to be a platform where to cultivate creativity, sense of initiative and of dynamism. I-Dare is a youth environment that promotes voluntarism and intercultural dialogue by welcoming people from abroad with cultural exchange programs. Therefore, diversity and multiculturalism are not just internal codes to conceive the working environment. They are also codes to conceive the working intervention. I-Dare does not fear the Other. It does not fear the different. In this direction, I-Dare fears conformism, homologation, submissiveness and passivity.

• Community resilience
• Learning by doing
• Positive Youth Development (Theory)
• Ethical and moral Codes

A compact community, with sense of belonging, civic consciousness and reciprocal respect is what the organization is trying to achieve, identifying youth with a pivotal role throughout this social prospective. Youth is supported to get self- capacitation and self-advocacy to influence the community and to initiate it to a path of moral and ethical acquisition that predisposes people to a sense of whole and social bond. The approach I-Dare chooses for youth empowerment is the learning by doing methodology, which favours both experience to theory and a dimension of joint participation. I-Dare embraces the Positive Youth Development Theory as an inspiring way to emancipate youngsters, by ascribing to them the role of agents of their own process of learning, against the concept of induced, traditional, systematic education. The denotative meaning of I-Dare is a Jordanian NGO, based in Amman and committed to social marketing initiatives. The connotative meaning of I-Dare is circulation of ideas, positive sustainable change, right to be but duty to research.

Projects and Campaigns

I-Dare in practice

1. On-Line Love Speech Project https://www.facebook.com/OLSJo1/ made of on-line and off-line initiatives, it helps youth orientation across the Web. It cognitively equips them with implications related to online self-disclosure, to deceitful contents and to Hyperreality. Founded by USAID, the project is currently at his second wave, properly named “UNITED for Online Love Speech”. A third phase will follow as a capacity- building phase. It will see the targeted youth as practically involved in acting for spreading online love speech, promoting positive and peaceful contents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_GlCNBoMCY

2. Jordanian youth to Prevent Violent Extremism: #United4PVE 100 Question on Violence campaign and project It is another branch of I-Dare action. It results from a scoping phase based on the research: “How to stop young Jordanian from joining violent extremism”. In the light of the achieved outcomes, I-Dare is working on building messages and narratives in order to prevent Jordanian Youth from engaging in, and committing to violent extremism movements and ideologies. A first pilot intervention has been implemented in Al Salt City and community.

100 Questions of violence is part of Preventing Violent Extremism Project. It is an on-line campaign that is based on the Pyramid of Hate theory. It examines the complexity of violence, its implications, its origins and mostly its disparate facets, through 100 questions. In this direction, I-Dare has structured a campaign based on audio-visual and written contents to involve the community on social platforms, to allow them to elaborate violence as a concept, to acquaint them with an exegesis of its infiltrations into society. The pilot phase brings the name of #United4PVE. I-Dare has currently implemented the second phase that is supposed to be the virtual expression of Shabab2250 project, as well. https://web.facebook.com/Shabab2250

3. Shabab2250 A project that puts in practice, on a Jordanian scale, the presuppositions of the UN2250 resolution about involving youth in, and devoting their expertise to, Peacebuilding and peacekeeping outcomes. #Shabab2250 is content of an on-line campaign, parallel to the project itself and continuum of the previous #United4PVE campaign, where topics about peaceful coexistence are treated and discerned interactively, through pictures, videos, articles and brief considerations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNZEtD-Eij0

4. Alternative Narratives: Media to combat violent extremism narrative The Knowledge Hub www.idareact.org It is a crosscutting endeavour. Indeed, Alternative Narratives contemplates a project itself. Equally, Alternative Narratives is a deeply rooted leitmotiv that goes along with all I-Dare projects, as its DNA. An alternative sight over the real. An alternative interpretation through which to conceive reality. A fresh, positive, constructive communication that does not counter dominant cognitive orders but uncovers other sides, other stories, pluralist views or pluralist practical ways to picture and experience reality. This project aims at both capacitating, and mobilizing media people, specifically in favour of more Arabic alternative narratives, in order to provide and to benefit from a much more assorted spectrum, to combat violent extremism.

5. Erasmus + and EuroMed Youth Programmes I-Dare for Sustainable Development is focused on intercultural and inter-religious dialogues’ programs. I-Dare has provided, and it is still willing to, around 100 professional, social and cultural exchange opportunities for young Jordanians, throughout these 3 years. In detail, I-Dare has included them into specific initiatives such as a beginning working approach to many fields, from an environmental, artistic and social one to more tangible business and entrepreneurship opportunities. What is more, I-Dare for Sustainable Development has been receiving European volunteers, 25 ones so far and each one for six months’ duration, to allow them to benefit from, and to contribute to, a diverse and culturally friendly environment.

6. The Daring Hub I-Dare is currently offering a co-working space for youth to develop social entrepreneurship and to get acquainted with the culture of creative economy as self-expression and self-determination.

7. ARTicipate: Active youth participation using art-based methods The intention is to approach active citizenship through art. The objective is a participatory society where youth actively express themselves through art, adapting their artistic talents to a goal of positive peaceful community. In this direction, ARTivism (Being active through art) founded by British Council, aims at using art to increase awareness about social cohesion in youth. Soon, I-Dare will be supported by the Spanish Embassy, in implementing a pilot project called “Comicipate” meaning participation through comics, with the intention of approaching the theme of peace through a light and entertaining method.

8. Structured Dialogue between youth and municipalities Since 2014, I Dare is carrying out projects related to establishing and institutionalizing structured dialogue between youth and municipalities. I Dare worked with seven municipalities; Ein Al-Basha, Salt, Dair Alla, Ajloun, Kufranjeh, Tafileh and Qadiseyeh. As an outcome, the organization managed to establish two “Youth Units” within the structure of the municipality at Ajloun and Kufranjeh.

9. Services provided by I Dare: - Social marketing “positive community change behavior” consultation. - VisiPro: NGO’s visibility, communication and outreach mix. - Fire Show. - Ideation and Action Hub.

External links

• I-Dare YouTube Channel
• Knowledge Hub
• Official Website