Mideast Youth: Thinking Ahead

By: Nesima Aberra

Sometimes the loudest voices are not always the best, especially on the Internet. It is overcrowded with competing often extreme and bitter viewpoints, arguments and causes, but it is also a remarkable place where the invisible in society can exist and find a place to be heard.

24-year-old Bahraini political science and international communication student Esra’a Al Shafei realized that the voices of dissent in the Middle East often ignored minority groups like Kurds and Bahai’s or oppressed people like migrants and Iranians fighting for democracy. To help solve that problem, she created a project that would become a diverse platform where individuals could come together in a collective and respectful manner to share their opinions.

“I realized so much was missing, so many voices yet to be heard that needed to be amplified,” she said.

It all started on a simple WordPress site in 2006, as Al Shafei had no developing or web skills. She said she quickly realized that marketing was an important component of creating an attractive, successful website that was “ahead of the curve.” Only fitting considering the tagline for MidEast Youth says “thinking ahead.”

With an international team of five employees, Al Shafei has worked to raise the profile of MidEast Youth by supporting the 800-1,000 writers who blog for the site, keeping up a colorful, professional design, interactivity and adding visual and audio content. The writers for MidEast youth come from all over the region sharing their own views on everything from news, religion, politics, gender, human rights, culture and the arts.

The site is a cross between a news site and a social networking site with where members can join and access playlists, multiple sharing tools and neatly organized blog posts on the front page. There are also multilingual versions in Arabic, Farsi and English.

The wider MidEast network includes special projects that focus specifically on issues like Kurdish rights and migrant rights. These sites are the cause of a lot of controversy and negative feedback for the MidEast Youth team.

“There is a lot of accusations and misunderstanding of who these people are even from human rights activists as if they are not worthy of this support,” she said of the religious and ethnic minorities highlighted by the projects.

However, Al Shafei sees the negative feedback has been beneficial because it “transformed our organization.”

The newest site to join the MidEast Youth network is called ahwaa.org, focused on the LGBTQ youth in the Middle East, which Al Shafei recognizes is sure to raise some eyebrows.

“It’s going to be hard leading that kind of website from a country that outlaws these kinds of activities,” she said, but she said there is an important target audience that will use it.

MidEast Youth also offers free design, development and hosting space for digital activists to help them join the community

Even though MidEast Youth hopes to mobilize change and stand up for justice, Al Shafei is quick to avoid over-exaggerating the role of social networks the way some analysts have by calling the uprisings in the Middle East as Facebook or Twitter revolutions.

“Everyone on the streets protested wearing shoes, but you don’t call it the shoe revolution,” she explained.

She said what’s revolutionary is the type of communication that is helping people express emotions they have harbored for a long time; now they have the tools to better connect with those ideas.

But running so many websites is not only a social challenge, but a financial one as well. MidEast Youth receives 45,000 to 50,000 unique visitors each month and there are 400 members on the English site. All that server space is expensive. Since MidEast Youth functions like a nonprofit, it needs donations to help cover the costs. The team members work on a volunteer basis. The site has also been awarded significant funding like a prestigious $10,000 grant from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in 2008 and seed-funding from Echoing Green, a nonprofit social entrepreneurship organization. They also design and selling digital tools and applications on a freelance basis, but notably accepts no support from any government to avoid mistaking the views of MidEast Youth.

“We want to make sure we’re independent and credible,” Al Shafei said.

As for the future, she said MidEast Youth plans to create a sustainable and stable revenue and business model and build more material to enhance the site and help “make the region a better place.”

“We want to make sure everyone is heard,” she said. “My passion is for everyone to have a voice, for whoever feels left out to have a very powerful voice.”

To visit: http://www.mideastyouth.com/