During the past quarter, APT organized online leadership sessions for 30 debate club members and students from different universities across Afghanistan. The objective of the leadership program is to increase the capacity of our debate club members and students in order to be future leaders of the country who are open-minded and critical thinkers with the true qualities of perfect leaders. The leadership program also serves as a hub of networking for the trainees and students for future collaborative projects.
The sessions were conducted online and facilitated by expert lecturers from the US, Canada and Afghanistan who have delivered different sessions that included subjects such as vision, communication skills, dealing with change, trust and respect, honor and shame, women in leadership, mutual understanding, innovation, stress and conflict management, increasing confidence and self-management, goal setting and journaling. At the end of the leadership course, students are divided into a group of four where each group has to come up with ideas to implement the learned materials. In addition, a lump-sum US dollar has been provided to each group to fund their social project.
- Group 1
Social Projects Leadership Program
Following of the leadership training, students in Nangarhar province conducted their social project for 25 students from different universities of Nangarhar province including females participants Through this project, the group explained different styles of leadership, qualities of a leader, styles of leadership, and the contrast between and manager and a leader for the program participants.
- Group 2
Project Title: Trailblazer
The second group of our leadership program titled “Trailblazer Leaders” conducted a session on email writing and providing information how to search job websites.
Mr. Noor Ahmad Shirzad former employee of UN-Habitat- the team leader, and Mr. Ahmad Fahim, the acting communication manager of the American University of Afghanistan who was the guest speaker, presented this session.
The session lasted for 90 minutes through Zoom Cloud, and all the participants of this group were senior university students. Through this project, more than 35 young university students learned the process of email writing and the skill of communication. Additionally, at the end of the program, one of the team members provided concise information about trust-worth job websites. At the last, each participant was assigned to write a formal email to submit to the team as part of the project evaluation. The team is connected with the participants through the WhatsApp group to assist them in their job-seeking journey in the future.
- Group 3
Project Title: Social Activists
The second team titled “Social Activists” designed a project to teach some team leaders, managers, and university students how to be motivated either as a leader or as a team members. The project consists of a 90-minute session and was carried out online. In this session, 5 team leaders, 4 managers, and 30 university students learned the core and basic knowledge regarding motivation: the definition, the needs, and how to be motivated in the challenging moments not only as a leader but also, as a team member, and how to motivate the people around yourself to convince them to work for the achieving the defined goals.
- Group 4
Project Title: Women Empowerment through Psychosocial
The defenders’ team conducted their social project entitled women empowerment through psychosocial counseling to 20 young females who joined from different places with different backgrounds. The session had three stages, 1. Understand the need for a specific focus on counseling women and girls. 2. Identify systemic influences that affect the well-being and experiences of females. 3. Bring about change in behavior of women and girls and enabled them to prevent their depression and anxiety. During the session, the following topics were explained:
- Physical and Mental Health
- Discrimination Between Men and Women
- Gender Equality and Women Empowerment
- Mind and Body
- Ways to prevent discrimination