Cafe Talk

What is the role of Café Talk?

Café Talk Vision: Engage every young person to become an active citizen in his community

Café Talk is about taking an active role in community life and making a positive contribution to society. Ways in which Café Talkers can achieve it by taking part in voluntary work, involvement in community organizations and engagement with local and national politics.
Encouraging and supporting young people to become active citizens is something, which has increasingly been recognized as a policy priority across the Arab world especially after the revolution.
In Tunisia, active citizenship is being driven through the Big Society agenda. Government policy also aims to achieve five overarching aims for young people – one of which is ‘making a positive contribution’. This is described as:
“Young People engage in decision-making, support their community and environment, engage in law-abiding and positive behavior in and out of school, develop positive relationships, choose not to bully and discriminate, develop self confidence, successfully deal with significant life changes and challenges and develop enterprising behavior.”
During the past five years, different civil society organizations in addition to institutions and other statutory and voluntary sector partners, are working to ensure the active participation of young people in the public life. Through café talk project we aim to bring young people together to discuss social issues in cafes and public spaces in order to achieve the following goals:
1. “Developing a culture where the views of our children and young people are routinely sought in matters which impact on their lives.”
2. Supporting young people to make a positive contribution and engage with their community to achieve a positive impact in it.
3. Engaging civil society organizations and public, corporate and media sector to collaborate together in order to face community challenges.
4. Encouraging young people to become active citizens has benefits for young people themselves as well as the communities in which they live.

As part of the benefits of café talk we can state:
Benefits for young people:
• Seen in a positive light by the community.
• Opportunity to build positive relationships within the community.
• Opportunity to take responsibility for the aspects of society, which affect them.
• Opportunity to develop new skills.
Benefits for the community:
- Young people less likely to participate in anti-social-behavior.
- Young people bringing forward new community projects and ideas.
- Young people developing a sense of social responsibility, which they will carry into their adult lives.
- Less young people will take part of terrorist and extremist groups

What is the project café talk?

Café talk was designed to encourage young people to think about the issues, which are important to them, and to participate in making sure these issues are addressed, enables young people to take a more active role in the running of society.

The program gives the opportunity for young people of taking on a voluntary role within the community and provides young people with an opportunity to develop new skills. It also allows them to demonstrate that they are making a valuable contribution through the different café talks they are organizing in their own communities, meaning that other members of the community view them in a positive light.
The skills that can be gained through this program include team-working, planning and organizing events and activities, problem-solving and meeting and working with new people.
Once young people are equipped with these skills, they are able to take them forward and use them in other aspects of their lives to help make a positive contribution through the competitions and activities planned during the whole process of the program.

We believe that having powerful conversations is the first step to improve our communities and make a change.

We value
Openness: Using our differences in ideas and experiences to solve problems. Being open to others opinions and accept differences are a vital component in discussions. Change: We believe that every person can be a change agent in the community. By putting together people’s ideas and suggestions you can come up with a plan to change your own community.
Positivity: During a Cafe Talk we treat problems but together we transform them into opportunities to make our community better. Through the 90 minutes discussions we will come up with suggestions and plans to bring hope and positivity into our life. Self-expression: Your voice matters, Cafe Talk opens the space for young people from different backgrounds to speak up their voices and share their ideas with their communities.
We aim to Support people in expressing themselves freely:
By providing the basics of debating and the techniques of communication, we will assure that every Cafe Talk participant will express him/herself freely and effectively. We will support people to make their voices heard in the public sphere. Engage people in social life We are willing to make Tunisia and the rest of the world a better place, so we need everyone to be more aware about local and social issues. By organizing open discussions in cafes, we aim to create new ways of spreading awareness and engaging youth in our country’s issues.
Find concrete solutions:

By engaging people into social life, we aim to develop their critical thinking and problem solving abilities. We will support them to create concrete solutions to our country’s problems and even to global concerns based on the discussion presented during each Cafe Talk.

What Resources Are Required?

1. Time
Citizens need time to learn about an issue and how they can influence the decision-making process. It takes time to research an issue, set up café talks and meetings and organize campaigns. The public has to be patient and not get discouraged if there are no visible and tangible results in a few weeks. Sometimes it takes months to see concrete results.
2. Stakeholders
Various groups, individuals or institutions in the community that are interested in the issue need to come together and work as a team to influence the decision-making process. Café talk will give the opportunity for their organizers to gather more then 10 person interested by this issue in a solution oriented process they will reach the concrete initiative they should organize. They will also get access to the advices of various experts (e.g. advisory groups) in order to get the best results.
3. Information
In order to have effective café talk, valuable information has to be disseminated. This should come from the organizers and the moderators where they have made research about their topics. Without information, citizen participation is virtually unattainable.
4. Media Attention
Media plays an important role in citizen participation and the café talk success. Information can be disseminated to the population at large in a very easy and efficient matter. Local media, especially, plays a key role in the process of citizen participation at the local level. The reason why we advise café talk host to make a media campaign to bring their attention.