Meshkat community
Meshkat Community (مجتمع مِشكاة) is an initiative which strengthens community cohesion and constructive dialogue in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region by building the skills, networks, knowledge, and action of citizens.
Snapp summary report

Since 2016, PeaceGeeks Jordan has created and grown the Meshkat Community, amplifying Arab voices for social inclusion in response to hate, violence, and polarization. Meshkat works to strengthen community cohesion by identifying and training local artists, digital content producers, innovators, women, and youth, as digital content creators, utilizing PeaceGeeks’ alternative narrative and transformative change methodology.

In 2021, through a grant from the Fund for Innovation and Transformation, we focused on understanding community conceptions of gender equality and creating content to advance gender equality from the community level.

Simultaneously, we launched the 18-month-long “Local Stories, Local Voices, Local Action” project, funded by the US State Department, which builds on the Meshkat program’s foundation that established the Digital Youth network (DYN) in Jordan. The new project engaged youth across three governorates to transform narratives of marginalization, cyber bullying, disempowerment and division in order to nurture agency, ownership, and positive community action on the most important issues facing them. By generating youth agency and powerful, positive engagement in online spaces, this project helped to increase community resilience to harmful messages, misinformation, marginalization and polarization.

Program participants created 57 locally-relevant pieces of content that challenge discrimination against women and promote attitudes of gender equality:

1 song
31 short films
21 podcast episodes13 written pieces
16 pieces of visual art2 murals

These pieces of content reached over 918 000 users across online platforms in the Middle East North Africa region.

Since PeaceGeeks’ Jordan’s inception in 2016, more than400 pieces of content focusing on themes of tolerance, diversity and equality, challenging narratives of hate and polarization, have been created by Jordanian film, media and graphic artists through the Meshkat Community.

Due to the growing reputation and demand for their alternative narratives (AN) transformative change (TC) methodologies, the Jordanian PeaceGeeks team are now being sought as trainers, partners and consultants on digital content creation and youth engagement work across Jordan and more widely in the region.

The challenge

Digital tools, social media, gaming, bots, videos, and misinformation play an increasingly prominent role in creating and amplifying existing social divisions and inciting violent actions. Despite some creative and effective online counter-messaging efforts by Arab youth and independent content producers, few resources have been dedicated to learn from these efforts or promote more media that curbs harmful narratives. Our goal is to prevent the continued escalation of social divisions and online violence by supporting the effective development and visibility of locally-produced content that strengthens constructive dialogue and creative responses to intolerance and hatred.

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Workshops and programs
Community Resilience Workshops
These workshops facilitate open dialogue among citizens in under-resourced, rural, and marginalized communities to deliberate local challenges and responses.
Capacity Building Workshops
These workshops equip content producers, activists, community-based organizations and civil society organizations with the skills, resources, and networks to create and amplify alternative narratives.
Artists-in-Residence
Meshkat Community works with a handful of artists every year who are funded and mentored to create art — fine arts, music, videos, performing arts, creative writing, and more — engaging with various themes of peace and prevention of extremism.
Peace Awards
The annual Meshkat Peace Awards recognize communities and organizations making outstanding contributions to the creation of content promoting critical, creative thinking, and constructive dialogue to strengthen social cohesion.
Digital Youth Network
The DYN provides young Jordanians between with the means, tools, skills, and knowledge to meaningfully engage in digital contributions to peace in safe, positive, and responsible ways.
Joint Action Plans
Developed by alliances within and across local communities, Joint Action Plans promote common objectives through community based activities, digital campaigns, awareness campaigns, and capacity building workshops for women and youth.
Website
The Meshkat Community website aggregates content promoting social cohesion in the MENA region, and creates a digital hub for people to share their content, observations, and reflections on effective responses to harmful online narratives.

Social Media
Meshkat Community creates, curates and shares content consistent with the objectives of Meshkat Community through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to inspire online citizens to promote social inclusion and challenge hate.

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Settlement 3.0
Innovations in our DNA (Full report)
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Innovations in our DNA (Executive Summary)
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Settlement 2.0
Innovations in our DNA (Full report)
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Innovations in our DNA (Summary)
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Community consultations report
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Situational analysis
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