LOCATION: Nablus Municipality, Nablus Governorate
The Yalu Center for Development Studies was founded in Nablus to serve the economic, social and cultural needs of women. It soon became clear that the women in the villages surrounding Nablus have the most urgent need for the Yalu Center’s services. A 2009 Community Leadership Empowerment Program award provided Yalu with a furnished facility that enabled the Center for the first time to conduct in-house training sessions and host meetings and events. The Yalu Center used the Community Leadership Empowerment Program strategic planning process to live its mission of engaging young women and helping them to be active citizens as early in life as possible, and involved in its planning a variety of women leaders from the Nablus villages, young volunteers and a village council member. The process identified a high demand for computers. Since CLEP would not have been able to provide a computer lab to each village, the Yalu Center’s strategic planning team established a mobile computer lab that increases outreach by providing connectivity to women in multiple villages.