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“Youth as researchers” initiative
Digital and Civic Action Among Arab Young Adults in the Time of COVID-19 – Arab Team 1
The UNESCO Regional Bureau for Sciences in the Arab States (UNESCO Cairo Office) participated in the “Youth as Researchers” initiative; a global initiative on COVID-19 that connects and partners with young people to conduct research on the impacts of the pandemic on youth and the responses implemented by young people to address these impacts. UNESCO Cairo office, through the support of two teams of young researchers from the Arab region, participating in preparing knowledge reports in the aforementioned field.
One of the two reports aims to study the digital and civic activity of Arab youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the second one aims to study the factors that affect the successful implementation of online learning in Arab universities during the COVID-19 pandemic, while highlighting how this transformation affects learning and students well-being.
In this regard, the 1st Arab team completed their research on “Digital and Civic Action Among Arab Young Adults in the Time of COVID-19” by the means of an online survey shared on social media focused on Arabs aged 20-35 years, that garnered 1,354 responses from 22 Arab countries. In addition, the team conducted virtual in-depth interviews with 26 active young Arab NGO leaders from 13 Arab countries who were identified using snowballing.
Results show that “Arab youth were more active civically (61%) than digitally (44%) with some distinctions across sub regions and countries”.
The disaggregation of data by type of social activity, as shown, indicates that males have a greater percentage engaging in civil activities compared to females. But it should be noted that out of 26 in-depth interviews held with Arab youth civil society leaders, 42% of them were females who are the founders of NGOs and initiatives.
As for the suggested recommendations, they were divided into short term and medium and long term recommendations:
- Build a strong regional civic/digital online youth platform.
- Promote volunteering in school curriculums in the Arab region.
- Foster multi-stakeholder collaboration between private sector, INGOs, Ministries of health, medical associations
To view more of the research outputs, it is recommended to visit the official page of the team on Facebook : and Twitter:
It is worth noting that both teams will share the outputs of their research with advisors from academia, civil society, United Nations bodies, as well as Arab governments in an electronic conference that will be held from October 5-7, in order to reach effective recommendations that can be presented to governments in an event scheduled to be held in December 2021.
Related links:
The teams of Arab States "Youth as Researchers" embark on research to study and address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Arab youth :
For more information:
Kindly contact Ms. Heba Shama (h.shama(2)unesco.org)
Programme Associate for Social and Human Sciences
