Presenter(s)
Presenter Bio
x closeMarialice Ariens has 12 years of experience in program management and capacity building. Ariens is currently working with USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) as Lebanon Program Manager. Prior to work with OTI, Ariens worked in western China on a government/public international organization coalition to strengthen community engagement initiatives. She has worked on a variety of issues, including capacity building, conflict resolution, and policy development, in a range of contexts and with a diverse array of stakeholders.
Presenter Bio
x closeNebojsa Radic is a civic activist and public relations consultant who specializes in strategic communications planning, media relations, and advocacy training. He was the Advocacy Team Leader in the USAID/OTI-funded Lebanon Civic Support Initiative, as well as the former head of the Open Society Institute’s communications departments in New York and Budapest.
Presenter Bio
x closeCedric Choukeir is the Regional Director for the World Youth Alliance in the Middle East and North Africa, the Vice President of the Youth Economic Forum in Lebanon, and a research consultant for the UNESCO office in Beirut. Choukeir co-authored the books entitled Effective Public Policy Engagement – A Guide for Civil Society Organizations in Lebanon and The Reformists Platform – 33 Policy Ideas to Modernize Lebanon. He holds a Masters degree in Local Human Development and International Cooperation from the University of Florence and has been training youth in Lebanon on public policy-making since 2010.
Presenter Bio
x closeOriana Wuerth has more than 9 years of experience designing and managing USAID-funded projects in the Middle East and post-conflict countries. She currently serves as Chief of Party of the USAID/Office of Transition Initiatives-funded Lebanon Civic Support Initiative. Prior to that role, she served as Acting Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Palestinian Authority Capacity Enhancement (PACE) project, overseeing program staff and technical implementation. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and speaks French and basic Arabic.
Catalyzing youth activism in marginalized areas and enhancing civil society organizations' (CSO) capacity to advocate for local and national issues were major focus areas of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Lebanon over the past 3 years. From that experience, the Lebanon Advocacy Index and Toolkit were developed by OTI to inform programming and target resources for improved outcomes. Funded by USAID’s Bureau of Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL) as part of the Learning Improvement Projects, OTI shared field experience from their advocacy initiatives in Lebanon and how lessons learned have been captured in the online Advocacy Resource Center as well as a self-paced Art of Advocacy training.
In this webinar, co-sponsored by PPL, the OTI Lebanon team introduced the key resources developed and how they were utilized in Lebanon, in addition to offering a look into the Advocacy Center and the self-paced Art of Advocacy training. This presentation was followed by a panel discussion about how these tools can be useful to the Agency’s programming and work on the ground. A speaker from the World Youth Alliance in the Middle East and North Africa also shared how they are using advocacy and capacity building tools to develop CSOs' public policy skills.
What is a Learning Improvement Project?
The objective of the Learning Improvement Projects is to catalyze Agency learning by sharing lessons learned from innovative pilot projects with the hope that promising approaches can be replicated and scaled up by others for greater impact. Each project must address all components of the learning cycle (create, organize, share, and use) as a way to ensure that the learning generated will not remain with a few individuals but effectively shared out to and utilized by a broader audience. The USAID-funded Knowledge-Driven Microenterprise Development (KDMD) project will provide customized support to all projects.
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