Jordan Times
Thursday, November 8, 2001
Canada Fund grants Save the Children JD21,000
By Dalya Dajani
AMMAN — Canadian Ambassador Roderick Bell on Wednesday presented Save the Children with a JD21,000 grant to support the international agency's effort to build the interpersonal and leadership skills of youth within their communities.Having pledged his support to the organisation's Partnership for Change Initiative, Bell said that the embassy's Canada Fund granted the money as part of its drive to assist small, local projects that focus on community development.
“As many of us here today are probably aware, youth who are below 18 years of age make up more than 50 per cent of Jordanians and they are the future of this country,” Bell told members of the press following the grant presentation ceremony.
“But as King Abdullah mentioned in the preface of Jordan's Human Development Report 2000, as a society, we haven't listened to youth enough. We need to help them develop freely and independently so that they can contribute to the development of Jordan,” he added.
The project on which Save the Children soon plans to embark involves building the capacities of five non-governmental organisation partners and some 240 youth within those communities, as part of a projected future youth forum.
The forum is expected to bring together 45 young men and women including youth between the ages 13 and 19 for interactive exchanges on their most pressing concerns and ways of sustaining development.
“Ultimately, this project will help these youth find among themselves a leader for their community. This isn't easy to define, but without this project, they would not otherwise have the opportunity,” the ambassador said.
He later told The Jordan Times that although the project may seem an ambitious one in its early stages, investing in youth by helping re-direct their energies towards better communication with their families is an important step.
Since the 1980s, the Canada Fund has worked to provide organisations and institutions working in community development with the needed technical, educational, economic or financial assistance.
Save the Children Field Office Director Zaki Khoury, expressed his appreciation of the support extended by the Canada Fund, which he described as “a positive example of forming solid partnerships on the national level.”