Rawand Al Hares Broadens Her Horizons and Participates in European Youth Voting Movement

Rawand Al Hares was graduated from the LAU MEPI TL Program late December 2018 in TV and Film. Going back home, Al Hares  was doing everything she could think of to find a job. At one point early in her search, she landed an interview for the exact role she wanted and started working. Finding a suitable job was only the beginning as Al Hares got a bigger plan in mind.

Few months later, Al Hares was between six out of 416 candidates that were selected to be part of « Y Vote »campaign, an initiative of Association des États Généraux des Étudiants de l’Europe (AEGEE), known as European Students’ Forum in English. The campaign’s objective is to encourage young people in Europe to make informed choices at the European Parliament elections. The campaign was run from May 23 to May 26 2019 and targeted Italy, France, Germany and Netherlands. Divided into two groups of three members each, Al Hares  and the team members got an intensive 10-day training in Istanbul where they learned about the campaign mission, the functioning of the EU and got the full Program agenda. Al Hares’ roles and responsibilities in this mission went beyond videography ; she was assigned for several tasks including organizing workshops, interviewing members of the European Parliement, conducting surveys with youth across 10 European cities. The mission was concluded with the participation in the European youth forum « Yo !Fest » during which Al Hares and her colleagues delivered workshops to an audience of 1011 people, and presented the results of the surveys they conducted to the newly elected European Parliement Members.

Al Hares rated this experience as outstanding ; it helped her ignite her filming and leadership skills into different areas, it also enabled her widen her spectrum by exchanging  thoughts about youths’ voting  and, among all, leave her own personal mark in the campaign.

Being a Libyan citizen, Al Hares was frequently asked about the reason of her participation in European youth initiative: « Policies adopted in the European Union have a profound impact on the middle eastern countries ; This experience  provided me with the needed tools to empower youth to be engaged in the democratic process in the future and that what I will transmit to the young generation in Libya. » she affirmed.