Our Story
A growing number of youth leadership organizations from across the Middle East and North Africa are coming together around a common goal: to create a better, more peaceful future for all.
We have formed a network for forward-thinking youth organizations from our region: WeAreMENA. Our mission is to foster grassroots initiatives that promote a generation of young people that can usher in a more peaceful, stable, and interconnected future for the MENA region.
Established in 2021, WeAreMENA (formerly the 4MENA Network) now includes more than 15 member organizations from 15 MENA countries. Each youth and young adult member organization operates in its own society on a grassroots level, addressing local needs through youth education and community leadership programs. Impact-driven youth networks are empowered to effect positive social change.
WeAreMENA pushes beyond politics and across borders. We bring together hundreds of emerging leaders and young educators from different nationalities and religious communities throughout the MENA region for immersive people-to-people encounters that foster cross-cultural understanding and lay the groundwork for regional cooperation.
WeAreMENA is unique, bringing together leading youth and young adult organizations from across the MENA region under one umbrella to form a coalition of organizations, committed to shared values, ideas, and a MENA-oriented vision of the future. Organizational leaders and educators from the UAE, Morocco, Israel, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and others come together not as individuals from different countries, but as people united in their goal to improve the MENA future.
Through youth and young adult empowerment programs, leadership seminars, and immersive cultural exchanges, we reframe the way we see ourselves and other MENA youth and young adults. Specific programs include vision-building summits for civil society CEO’s, Holocaust teacher training for the Arab world, interfaith dialogue and cross-border climate action.
WeAreMENA creates safe spaces for the region’s next generation, filling in cultural, political, and social knowledge gaps. We learn one another’s history, share life experiences, and come to value the humanity in us all, while focusing on creating impact in our countries and across our region.
WeAreMENA has the power to transform the MENA Region from conflict and mistrust to a region of understanding and cross-cultural collaboration. Our work has never felt so urgent.
Historically, the MENA Region has been marked by conflict and division. WeAreMENA seeks to change this, looking to turn the corner on violence and war, and working hard to make the Region’s future one of stability, innovation, and peace. Youth cooperation under agreements like the Abraham Accords points to the potential for cross-cultural dialogue and coexistence; it inspires us and gives us hope. The time to build our future is now.
WeAreMENA explores and promotes grassroots solutions that unite rather than divide. We are educators working with other educators, partnering with civic and young leaders to realize our shared vision of thriving economies and vibrant societies for the entire MENA Region. Through meaningful cultural exchange programs for young leaders, we engage with the past, confront the challenges of the present, and inspire the next MENA generation to pursue peace and prosperity through partnership.
Established in 1924, NOAL is the oldest, largest, and most inclusive youth organization in Israel, with 90,000 Jewish, Arab, and Druze members. NOAL’s alumni include Nobel Peace Prizer winners Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Teaching leadership skills, social responsibility and the importance of diversity, NOAL creates citizens and future leaders who will promote mutual understanding and multi-cultural cooperation.
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