The pillars of the initiative are:
- Dialogue and Conflict Prevention- Promotion of good governance
- Justice, human rights, and the rule of law
- Urban/rural development and engaging local communities
- Gender equality and emporwering women
- Education, training and skills development
- Economic development and job creation
- Strategic communications, informatics and social media
- Empowering youth
Whereas the above is a bit utopic I still gave it a pass as I used to write such documents myself and I know one gets carried away in the theory of it all. Still, I was so entralled that I went to fill the application to support the whole thing (here).
This is where I had a case of violent extremism regarding the whole thing!
The damn thing does not load.
I tried - refreshing, relinking, retyping, inserting on google, but no - the application does not load.
What a pity. Truly. Sadly this is a typical case of good-intentioned things in Lebanon. Somewhere, somehow, it is bound to be a "catch" - something that starts off promising ends up hitting a road block, or gets politicized, or receives shady money, or gets hijacked for some ego-trip (I have examples about each of such cases)... And in the end it just fizzles.
How on earth are we supposed as interested parties (be it civic society members, or academics, or companies or whatever) actually support something when the simple act of filling a survey online proves so challeging - if not to say impossible!
I rest my case.