This is the discussion we had at the end of the workshop in Medenine, where the participants summarized what they think about:
Hajeur:
Ines is a helpul girl she wants to help people, for Nidhal I saw some common points between us which is the communication, he is an artistic soul, he is so emotional
Najib:
I am interested about what Ali said, the way he presents the problem and the resolution of them, and it works for him, he already works on many fields (theatre, social activites…)! and for Zmorda, I am interested about how she has new concepts and perspective in seeing things.
Zmorda:
We ve had a seires of workshops, in Tunis and Monastir, people were concentrating on themselves, but in here people focus on social problem that concerns the whole community in Medenine, I am impressed! we belong to the same country but they care more about the community.
The biggest reflexion is how to move these emotions into actions, there is a will but (Hajeur interrupts: we are here the, community is here but we don’t have the technincs and the strategies to turn it into actions…)
Nadia:
Every single problem that matters to you is a good place to start because it has filters to many other things to do, that was the point of the exercises to see what matters to you: WHICH ARE THE SPECEFIC PROBLEMS THAT MATTERES TO YOU?
Hajer: isocial, we have a conservative society, from the outside, but in the inside we are not conservative…
(We moved to discussing the papers that were chosen by each participant)
Ammar:
I took the “Shame” card: people here are ashamed from themselves, the youth in here are like that, they need to get rid of that and accept themselves and be confident, a girl is a second priority in here and it is hard for a woman to prove herself and she is always judged, and this is passed from a generation to another, we are told how to behave, to act, we are complexed, but we need to love ourselves and feel like we are satisfied about ourselves , and to change that, we need to work on the mentality, and give the youth a space to act and start initiatives to understand themselves / People don’t support each other, and mostly they are the elderly of the community/ We need people that support us, even with a good word, and a small act… we need more soft skills … and learn that people learn from their mistakes and not the opposite.
Ali:
I chose infrastructure card, because in Medenine there is no correct infrastructure, it is week, and I am talking about entertaining spaces, green zones where the youth can gather in and have festivals to mobilize the youth, the already existing two cultural coffee shops are emptyand failing, because the owner gathers his close network and then done! No thinking of integrating the whole community
Hajeur:
The background of the society: we are a new society that is trying to discover itself, we havethe origin of Bedouins, so even the bureaucratic of this region is new, we still have a weird communication style, and the tribes mentality is taking control over the city… we need to work on the civil society ,because it is helping us to communicate more… this is why we don’t know how to share, because we don’t really understand each other: My card: I am not able to choose one over one, but I will talk about economy because we need more investments, and the government’s attention over that. Culture which is important for me, it is sharing and knowing how to communicate, and separate objectivity from subjectivity, focus on communication, and create a balanced economy, and culture where we need to know how to co-live with our own selves…
Nidhal:
The mentality in Medenine misses the innovation, you will always have someone giving negative comments; we only repeat each other’s ideas, and second: we lack good communication skills
because in such an opportunity, such as this workshop, we are enabled to discover each other, since we are used to judging other people without even knowing them, but then we are here, talking to each other and learning new things…
Ines:
The problematic in Medenine is the lack of entertainment tools, we only work and study and that is how we spend our lives, with nothing in between… even if there was a culutural movement in the society lately, it still missing a lot of work! People now don’t understand what is the civil society about, they don’t understand the procedures followed by the associations ( People don’t trust them, they only ask what political party they belong to… ) also the media is affecting in a dirty way the image of the associations, and people don’t know the volunteering, they only think of the financial output of it… (Nejib interrupts: people don’t know how to do it in the first place …) (Ali interrupts: we want a small output out of it, and not necessarily money but some acknowledgment is enough, and most of the civil society doesn’t do that) and I chose personal activities and initiatives card: when we ask our colleagues to volunteer they refuse to do so, they don’t want to take initiatives… also the activities in the volunteering has a huge impact over the human being, when seeing its procedure of how it is helping people (Anes interuupts: It changes the way we see things
Mohamed:
Information exchange card: the world now is based on information so we need to know which information we need and which we don’t, and how to share it.
Transparency card: people don’t know how to be transparent with each other and neither with theirselves, we envy each other and we don’t communicate!
Employment and work card: I am unemployed since two years, I want to learn how to work and be professional! and if I didn’t find a job I will launch my business…
Haykel:
I chose my card without thinking of anyone else but myself, when I finished my university, I had no activities to do because we have nothing that we can do in Medenine except for working and studying …so I wanted to change that and I thought of taking part of what is happening and I started an association with my friends where we met a lot of people from Medenine, and foreign ones, we were moving all over the world, and we were doing a great job, but in Medenine we were called different bad names and we had different insults… but I learned from that! and then I felt I have enough knowledge and skills in multimedia and audio-visuals (my field of studies), as I always participate in different workshops in all over Tunisia, (I pay for getting knowledge and I am happy for that and I shared my knowledge unlike the people in here who don’t want to share such things usually!) and with the help of some friends, I got different opportunities, and the biggest one was: Souk Altanmia, it gave me a fund… and I started my project, and the actual work od the project started from the community I had from the civil society…
However, at a certain time I stopped working on civil society because it was all over the place and we had a lot of them since 2013! there were a lot of associations that are ineffective ones … ( we had some who were professionals, and it was good, but then it turned into a business … ) during this time, I started to participate in programs that reinforce my skills and capacity … and now we are working on creating our real new association that works on entrepreneurship, culture and art.
Zaineb:
I also thought of myself: I chose the family, friends, relationships, self improvement.
Family and friends are my major support; as for the self-improvement is about how to change myself to change our reality
I can relate to all what they have said, but the most important thing for me is the will to change the city and the country and I do believe that we can.
Anes ( only 16 years! )
I want to discover new things and hear what people think, I want to be present in everything, in the high school there is an average demand for such workshops and activities, I discovered the civil society myself and I loved to participate in it, but my family want me to focus on my studies.
The time I have now it will never be back! so I want to learn as much as I can.
My reflection about the workshop in Medenine
So I was happily surprised because the rain was so heavy, and there was some small floods in the streets that makes it super hard for people to move from a place to another, but then people came even in this weather… and they really made a huge effort to come! I appreciated that a lot.
It was an emotional one, the most emotional workshop in Tunisia, and it was different because we got in the deep thinking and tackled the sensitive issues for the youth of Medenine.
All of the people in the workshop were people I know, except for one, and I can say that this was the most honest discussion they have ever made while talking to someone in a workshop, maybe because ofthe methodology followed by @Nadia maybe, it engaged people from the start.
What was common for all the people in the room, is that WE ARE HERE, we want to change the situation in Medenine, because it is not fair for us to not be given opportunities that you easily find in other regions of the country.
Most of the people talked about the communication, they mentionned the non ability for the youth in here to communicate correctly, because we don’t communicate often, and that is what they loved about the workshop, they were TALKING to each other and saying everything they think about, and COMMUNICATING in a very passionate way.
Most of them complainced about the severe lack of activities that we can do in here, it is as I saidin my story, people has nothing in between job and school to do, the life in here is passive and full of deadly routine, there is no space for innovation and mental productivity.
The importance of the civil society in here, since it is the only thing that helps them to be an active citizen.
what I loved the most and captured me the most is that people were talking with passion about what we can do in Medenine, it wasn’t like individual perspectives and projects like the case in Monastir and Tunis! But it was more about what we can do to HELP Medenine.
I was always told by @Nadia and @Zmorda that I am so in love with Medenine, but then after this workshop I think it is obvious that most of the people in here are so in love with it.
