This project was focused on a unique network of young researchers in the Middle East who established themseves as a knowledge base on the issues facing Arab youth.
Background
The purpose of YARN was to be a regional youth-led network that undertakes research focussing on the most relevant priority issues for youth of the region. YARN also worked with a range of existing adult-led research bodies to strengthen the youth perspective to their research activities and to help disseminate their findings to youth and others in an accessible format.
Our vision was to be recognised nationally, regionally and internationally for our work with a generation of young Arabs who, through collaboration, would produce powerful, credible research about youth, provide a reliable and respected evidence base to be used effectively by young people and others to make decisions that were in young people's interests.
Project aims
- To build a regional youth-led research network that reaches diverse groups of young people who want to play an active role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge concerning youth;
- To provide training, guidance and support to enable young people to undertake high quality research to investigate the issues that affect them;
- To act as a network for its members enabling them to exchange ideas that will further empower them to as researchers;
- To collaborate with similar networks in the region, the UK and internationally to share experiences and learning and publish research carried jointly;
- To build up a virtual research information database / library that makes key research concerning youth more accessible across the region;
- To create linkages with policy-making institutions nationally and internationally so that they draw on this up-to-date information as evidence when making decisions that affect youth;
- To enhance awareness of the ethics of responsible research in the region and to promote the important role of research as evidence for all decision-making and its contribution to good governance;
- To establish fund-raising mechanisms that will ensure that the research network is institutionally and financially sustainable after project funding ends.
Project updates, publications and resources archive
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June 2010 update: IARS has been working with two research teams of young people in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as part of the British Council led Youth Arab Research Network (YARN) as part of its Global Change Makers initiative. The Yemen team have now completed their research report on the affect of television on youth identity. This is a unique and original piece of work that investigates what affects that local, regional and international programming has had on their sense of national, regional and global identities. The findings will be made available soon. IARS will be working with the British Council, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Institute for Public Policy Research to produce a final report for the YARN to be released in the UK in October and at the World Economic Forum to be held in Morocco. To find out more information please e-mail l.parle@iars.org.uk |
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December 2009 update: IARS travelled to Beirut as part of a YARN meeting that brought together young people from different Arab states, including Yemen and Saudi Arabia, who IARS has been working with. The meeting was very exciting and enabled the young researchers from each Arab state to share with the other young people their findings from their research projects on identity. At the meeting IARS held workhops on data analysis and report writing. Workhops were also held by the London School of Economics and Political Science and Institute for Public Policy Research. |
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June 2009 update: IARS's involvement in the Youth Arab Research Network kicked off in the exciting and buzzing city of Cairo. IARS along with other organisations including the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Institute for Public Policy Research attended the project meetings to provide research and policy expertise to the young researchers. During the project meetings the young researchers decided that the topic they would investigate would be identity. This topic was a powerful statement for a group of young people who felt that they were not often listened to in the worlds of policy and academia and wanted an opportunity to define for themselves who they are. |
