Edgeryders team had the pleasure to meet young enthusiastic from Tunisia during the three workshops held in Tunis, Monastir and Medenine between the **30th of September and the 3rd of October.
These workshops were great opportunities for the young participants, coming from these regions with different backgrounds, to learn more about the work of Edgeryders, the Open Village project and to learn from each other as well. they shared openly their experiences, their visions and thoughts on how address the problems in their communities and how to lead the change.
The first workshop took place in Tunis, where we have facilitated a discussion to reflect on:
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General sense of not knowing what do, feeling lost
where should I engage myself? -
Employment (conditions) in a time of high unemployment
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Education
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Stability: When can you say - now I am stable?
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Security & Precarity: Health insurance
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Cultures of co-working and co living spaces
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Commitment to something (a place, a common interest)
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Affecting Change & Engagement in Politics
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How to correctly engage people: Community building & management (learned mainly in civil society in Tunisia)
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Fear of instrumentalisation: What if I will end up being part of something spreading e.g. culture of isis without me knowing it?
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Civil society: Most mentioned civil society and what an effect it has had on their own personal life. Fear of the future, working and paid from civil society but at some point you will have to find a “real job”
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Entrepreneurial spirit & Corrupting influence of funding: people no longer trust the international organisations, especially since a lot of money was coming into finance daesh, via mosques.
What each participant said about themselves?
Ahmed:
Cards: Core Values, Solution, Budget.
**Q: How do we change the educational system that we have?**
@Yosser: “Ahmed talked about loving what you do, picking something which you love to learn. His experience with the civil society- he found what he loved in it—you can work on it that there is a fear about the future, that you will not be able to do it in th future. Like being hired in an organisation, the peter principle…and when you ar promoted you can no longer work on what you love. once you fnd you can find your own peace of mind you can become more productive and help others.”
How do you keep your values while offering the solution…and how to maintain a healthy budget that goes with your values?
I’ve been hearing people are working on something that they don’t love, that they are chosing the major at University based on the name, not its content. How do we develop an education system that respects the persons’ needs and not the needs of a system that has been here for 40 years and that creates unemployment all the time?
Amine
Cards: Profit, Solution and Reach out tactics.
Q: How do I get retired at the age of 40 so that I will do things I really like to do?
I am not the only schizophrenic person in this room : There is a big difference between what we are studying and what we want to do. I thought it was only me, but I found out that there are many people who fear that change, that want to stick with what they are comfortable with/stable situation.
Profit because when I do things I love I don’t think about budget. Reach out tactics: I have a lot of projects that I think are useful for people but I don’t know how to market them. Example: teacher substitution problems in school - I came up with a solution for myself and gave it to my school. But I didn’t go beyond that. Also have made a route planner - faste. I create things but I don’t think about tactics and how to sell them and market them…because I do them for fun. I want to find solutions for other people’s problems without ignoring the sustainability and marketing part.
Randa
Q: How do I…
I am a textile engineer - trained as it but am not working at the moment. For the moment I have mixed feelings. Fortunately we know what we love. Unfortunately it’s maybe not exactly what we learned at university, what we graduated as. This causes unhappiness and disequilibrium and fear. This is our situation. I thought it was just me, that I am the only one. What I really want to do is mentoring and coaching others.
My passion is to help people, I feel such a great satisfaction when I do it.
The idea of an open village was not very clear for me, not sure if it is going to be just online or a place where we sleep and work. What I’m doing right now [not sure what you are referring to…can you elaborate please] is really useful for Open Village. If you go back to the cards I picked, you understand that well.
Mohamed
Cards: Team, Timeplan and Budget.
Q: How do I find stability that works for me?
Electrical engineer. With this discussion I am so happy because I share many experiences with my friends. Feeling supported and seeing my own future in other people who are older.
Your job? Engineer in Electromechanics/ trader
Your Health? Great!
Why choose “medicine” card? Different tastes: want to do other things than my specialty. Work on environmental issues (Volunteer at red crescent…), work with hospitals, look for installing a healthy system for things to work…
Who supports you with your projects? I lacked support in an important stage of my life, so I learned that I needed to support myself, and also my community in the process. I am looking for the great team who will share the dream or project.
Moez
Cards: Reach out Tactics, viability, roles and responsibilities.
Q: How do I organise my priorities in a way that makes me balanced between my own needs and those of my community/family?
Breaking the cycle of not being supported or supporting others. If we have some people breaking the cycle. I like change- like not being sure about what the future holds for me. Resigned from public sector. Have a lot of ideas that I can put in service for this country, especially education and health- i think if we can fix this we can help people to fix everything else. The fixation on specific problems can help us to appreciate the other things we have.
Reach out tactics - I struggle alot with getting people motivated for the right reasons. E.g. with training go to training for trainers or debaters…we talk about all kinds of stuff to do with intrinsic value, but really people are there for funding. How to change that? Roles and responsibilities: the problem of having rigorous lines for each person’s responsibilities- whole load of work on shoulders of small number of people…but then benefits are spread across everyone. Some people can say it’s ok they don’t mind but when time comes for credits then this can break teams and people.
- What do you do right now?* Teacher (university) maths, and debate trainer.
- what is your “career” in sport? *I practice sports regularly since 20 years, different kinds of sport
- what’s the major problems in society in your view? * Education, Health and Transport
- How do you think these can be solved?* By working at many levels: public policy, social dialogue, inclusion of different actors, pressure on government, etc…
- What do you plan to do in the foreseeable future?* Be more active and engaged at the civil and political levels.
Sana
Q: How do I leave my current job?
I am working as a designer in a big company and the Relationships at work at work are not great I am facing a lot of problems at work.
What kind of problems with your director? Good relationship
What kind of problems with your colleagues? They create problems for me with my boss
How much risk you can support? I can’t support any risk, just I need lot of patience.
@Sohayeb
Cards: Value, Scalability.
Q: How do we build a youth political party to win the next elections or the one after to make necessary reforms in our country? How do we bring about reforms to make it simpler for young people to start new organisations/startups in Tunisia?
Trained as an engineer now working in Marketing. Many of us became engineers without knowing why we became engineers. After this conversation I believe even more in community. The certain thing is that there are people out there who are working on things, the problem is that these people are not connected in a way that these people can share knowledge, skills …if they could come together the could change a lot of things. I think the open village shares this vision of making people come together and work together on local problems, and in this way to make change at global scale.
How to make sure that the things we are doing is bringing value to people and how to scale this from small community to a large community.
Ahmed
Ahmed talked about loving what you do, picking something which you love to learn. His experience with the civil society- he found what he loved in it—you can work on it that there is a fear about the future, that you will not be able to do it in th future. Like being hired in an organisation, the peter principle…and when you ar promoted you can no longer work on what you love. once you find you can find your own peace of mind you can become more productive and help others. “
Education: Love what you do / Passion / civil Society helps you find what you love (failure of educational system) / Commitment / Learn to help directly/indirectly / Communication (passionate) spread this culture for the sake of different regions /fear of the future (financial stability) / Peter principal ) / risk averse
Firas
Card: Passion.
Q: How do I create a work environment which supports people to achieve their mission?
Mechatronics.engineer. After discussing with my new friends. We have a deep belief that we should make actions, we just have to do things. All of us have a lot of problems, tunisia has a lot of problems…how to make it better? this is what we have to discuss.
How to make passion, and how can I make a living from my passion. How can I create a company that I can live my passion and make money while doing it?
Iyed
Cards: Time plan, profits and hazards
**Q: What I see is a lot of people are desperate in Tunisia. How can I succeed when so many people do not succeed? How do I make the world a better place to live in Tunisia? **
These problems need a lot of work. That work can creat a lot of opportunities. It can help us to create the jobs we want in all kinds of fields.
It’s important to set your deadlines and how much you need. Hazards because you cannot make a lot of money without taking risks.
Yosser
Cards: Employment and work ,Peace of mind and fear,Work
Q: How do we change the educational system that we have?
The collective power we should all work together. Ahmed talked about loving what you do, picking something which you love to learn. His experience with the civil society- he found what he loved in it—you can work on it that there is a fear about the future, that you will not be able to do it in the future. Like being hired in an organisation, the peter principle…and when you are promoted you can no longer work on what you love. once you find you can find your own peace of mind you can become more productive and help others.
I’ve been hearing people are working on something that they don’t love, that they are choosing the major based on the name not content. How do we develop an education system that respects the person’s’ needs and not the needs of a system that has been here for 40 years and that creates unemployment all the time? Cards: Core Values, Solution, Budget. How do you keep your values while offering the solution…and how to maintain a healthy budget that goes with your value.
Employment and work: wants her own leader, to encourage people how to start their own projects. Sher wants to develop her personal skills. She want to develop her home town Medenine, start jobs there
Peace of mind and fear: it encourage her to reach her limit and be part of open village to find people encouraging her, moral support
Work: create jobs in Medenine, where there is no oppp and have to work in the capital Tunis. Create potential, for younger generation
Salma
Cards : Pollution ,Health care ,Dynamism & collective commitment
Q: How can I…
I want ourselves to be happy and find out comforts. That doesn’t mean just fo us- we all want to live in better society - to improve our work, education and lifestyle. Improve ourselves.
I believe that if I it cannot answer to all of these cards then what I do is useless/cannot make an impact.
Dynamism & collective commitment: together are united and stronger, we youth should be models for others and be leaders in our communities to show the other how we can do together.
Our commitment: find solution for the daily problems
Health care: I’m member of the ambulance in my community and I can see that people on our community not having the necessary health care, so we want to find simple solutions to provide the basic health care for free because it’s become a luxury here in Tunisia
Health care is a basic necessary in our community and we should defend that right
Pollution: Tunisia is much polluted and that makes me very angry and my commitment is to find solution for that
If I will work in health care, pollution and commitment in the open village, it can help me a lot by living with people who support you every day and everybody is connected and support each other.
Mahmoud
Cards: Roadmap, eliminating Distractions, Time plan.
Q: In every job interview they ask you where do you see yourself in x number of years. How do I know what I will do in 1 year?
Self reflection is good - what we are doing and what we want from the future. Actually what I want in next month, six months etc, This exercise is very good to reflect on what I did and what i want to do in the future.