With renewed Endowment support, Civitas carried grassroots training in advocacy and post-election of the local councils in the Gaza Strip, concentrating primarily on the local council elections that had taken place on 2005. Using its group of five advocacy committees that coordinate its work at the district level, Civitas lead a training for 200 members of 66 Neighborhoods Committees (NCs) through out the Gaza Strip in areas included Beit Hanoun, Gaza District, Middle Gaza District, Khan Younis, Rafah, and Nuseirat. Civitas trained the members of the advocacy committees last year and worked through them to provide voter education in other areas of the Gaza Strip, where voting took place in 2005. Each of the 50 advocacy committee members conducted four workshops on elections as a political right, elections as a peaceful tool of power transfer and representation, fairness of elections, various electoral systems, selection of candidates, and mechanisms of voting and counting. Participants received an educational booklet on elections and citizens’ rights, which Civitas prepared under previous NED funding and reprinted for these sessions.

Members of the advocacy committees were deployed on Election Day to monitor the fairness of the process and observed the treatment of candidates. Monitors were on-site during the elections and used prepared forms to submit to Civitas’ project management staff. These were form the basis of data gathering, which Civitas analyzed for final statements on these elections.

Following the elections, Civitas staff and advocacy committee members worked with neighborhood committees (NCs) to strengthen their advocacy abilities in order to enhance their interaction with the local councils. The NCs are voluntary citizen bodies that were established under the Palestinian local governance law to provide citizen oversight to the local councils.  Each committee is comprised of seven to 13 community members, who are selected through neighborhood elections, and is led by a chairperson, deputy, and secretary.

Civitas lead training workshops for three members from 66 NCs (total of 200 members). Participants were nominated by each NC based on their level of authority within the NC, commitment to participation in the training, and dedication to monitoring the local council.  The training addressed advocacy issues, such as how to organize and conduct public events, develop positive relations with the media, build effective teams and coalitions, and achieve consensus; the total group were divided into eight training groups of 25 participants each; each group received 24 hours of training distributed over four days.

Civitas selected 66 NCs that fairly represent the overall Gaza population.  There were 13 NCs from each of Gaza Strip’s five sub-districts (plus Gaza City), and Civitas ensured equitable distribution among major urban centers, refugee camps, and villages. Participating NCs included Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Bureij, Nusseirat, Maghazi, Zawayda, al-Mosaddar, al-Moghraqa, Johr al-Deik, and Wadi al-Salqa.

Civitas’ advocacy committees followed-up with the trained NC members to lead and organize activities in their local communities. A series of public meetings and panel discussions were provided for community input into local council decision-making, while strengthening the NCs ability to manage public events and interact professionally with the local councils. The 200 NC members lead 20 activities that varied from town hall meetings bringing 150 people together to discuss an issue of pressing importance to 25-person panel discussions to address more technical issues. Many of these events were covered by radio and televisions stations, as evidenced by Civitas’ previous activities.