Conference Objectives
ROTAQ’s objectives of EMPOWER 2009 Youth Conference are to:
  • Promote service learning as a learning method that complements academic skills and builds better citizens whilst addressing community needs;
  • Create a platform for youth to gain greater global awareness, develop new skills and discover their voice to realise the change they want to see;
  • Create an opportunity to reflect and redefine the youth of Qatar as core assets to the sustainable development of Qatar; and
  • Facilitate a forum for exchange of ideas, concepts, projects and reflections that address local needs and global issues.
Conference Themes
The lectures and workshops will aim to address three main themes. These include:
1.Personal leadership:
Promoting personal excellence, including setting goals and forward planning, having personal mission statements, marketing one’s skills and abilities, positive attitude and healthy self esteem to inspire others to be their most excellent selves.
“Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future”.
Edwin H Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, 2007
2.Service Learning:
Promoting civic responsibility: a duty to one’s country, community and the world as a whole and the importance of correlating community service to academic learning.
“Service is the rent you pay for room upon this earth!”
Mohammed Ali (Former World Championship Boxer)
3. Global Citizenship:
Promoting youth voice on social justice issues like human rights, migrant worker situations, the global economy, climate change and peace building.
"Responsibility is the only socially maturing factor”
David Woollcombe: Youth Led Development: Empowering youth to make poverty history, 2007.
What is Service Learning?
Cleaning up a river is Service Sitting in a science classroom, looking at water samples under a microscope is learning.Students taking samples from local water sources analyzing the samples, documenting the results and presenting the scientific finding to a local pollution control agency is "service learning”
National Youth Leadership Council NYLC. To find out more visit: www.nylc.org