ESCWA Awards for Arab Digital Content: Projects make a real difference

Seven projects from various Arab countries won the award, three of which are for the category of institutions and four for the category of young entrepreneurs. All have left a clear impact on pushing the Arab society ahead with achieving the global goals stipulated in Sustainable Development Plan for 2030.

I launched the Eskwa Arab digital content award for sustainable development 2021, within Arab Forum for Sustainable Development. Through it, it seeks to contribute to bridging the deficiency in digital content, and developing the information and knowledge community in the region.

The winning projects this year focus on several developmental fields, from improving the writing of digital content to creating new opportunities and methods of learning, and from supporting climate work to strengthening human media.

Reshaving the “spirit” of human media

Among the winners was the Palestinian “Spirit” initiative, a platform launched about a year ago to produce safe humanitarian stories for mental health, by investing artificial intelligence techniques, psychology and digital technology.

In an interview with the ESCWA media team, the project manager Sumaya Abu Ramouz said that the idea of ​​launching the platform came after its work for 15 years in the news rooms in the editorial and program management chairman. She added: “I was very shocking content during this work and felt its influence on my psychological health, so I decided to study it deeper during the Master’s trip.”

She said that there is an urgent need to produce human content that takes into account mental health, training young journalists on the principles of the right human media, and tools to help digital platform users get rid of the amount of negative energy they are exposed to, which is provided by the “Spirit” platform.

Mrs. Abu Ramouz emphasized that the Eskwa Award has strengthened the confidence of workers in the project to the work they are doing, and that they are able to expand and develop the idea from the local framework related to Palestine to all the Arab region.

Empowering Arab youth with skills and opportunities

As for the Jordanian “opportunity” platform, one of the winners of the institutions category, it connects Arab youth to the opportunities of education, employment, training and capacity building – in addition to prizes and competitions – to be more competitive in the local and global labor market.

Dr. Sami Hourani, the founder of the platform and its executive director, said that a “opportunity” has sought for 15 years to guide people who have not had information, skills and capabilities, which often could be “Electoral.”

He said that the ESCWA Award for Arab Digital Content for Sustainable Development is among the opportunities that are presented to Arab youth on the “opportunity, which has more than five million users and is visited by more than one hundred thousand people per day.”

He added: “This award opens up new horizons for partnerships and work with regional and international institutions through which you can expand the influence and arrival of” opportunity “for new people in need of these opportunities and in different places.”

Press solutions to counter climate change

From Egypt, the “Climate School” won the category of young entrepreneurs, which was founded by Rahma Zia, which provides support to journalists in covering climate change issues in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The school provides advanced vocational training to produce an effective and effective digital content in Arabic. Mrs. Diaa said that many content related to climate issues are scientific and complex, and “sometimes it includes misleading information or superficial coverage.”

س In order: “The Climate School is training journalists to link climate stories to people’s daily lives. We offer them tools to produce an effective auditory and visual content. We focus on the solution of solutions because opinion polls indicate that the focus is always on disasters and negative news about climate change leads to aversion to reading. So if we want a different response, we must change the way the content is presented, and we focus on solutions and support the most fragile groups in the face of a change Climate.

Digital reference to improve the user experience

The “content writing method” also won the learning platform for writing the user experience in Arabic, which aims to be a reference for specialists in writing guidelines in various digital projects, including applications on mobile, websites, digital platforms and even digital games.

Mahmoud Abed Rabbo, the founder of the platform and its executive director, said that the evidence was launched in 2021, and works to improve the user’s digital journey by ensuring “the texts are not to be poor, and that they are clear, understandable and accurate.”

He told the ESCWA media team: “The first evidence of its kind in the Arab world is considered open source, meaning that anyone can develop or copy it completely and use it in a commercial or non -commercial manner.

Mr. Abd Rabbo stressed that the ESCWA Award for Arab Digital Content for Sustainable Development “It gives a very large value and weight to the evidence”Therefore, the confidence of the specialists in it increases, as the authorities in the government, semi -governmental and private sector will stimulate the reliance on the guide.