A Political Mosaic: Jordanian and Dutch youth share experience and insights

NIMD Jordan has launched its Political Youth Camp. This intensive week of training aimed at strengthening the capacity of 35 members from across Jordan’s political party youth wings. The camp was designed to support young political actors to develop the skills and strategies needed to play a more active role within their parties.

What set this camp apart was the collaboration with youth representatives from three Dutch political parties. These representatives joined the programme to share experiences and engage in peer-to-peer learning with their Jordanian counterparts.

Learning across borders

The training programme is built around a peer-to-peer learning model, encouraging dialogue between participants and trainers. As part of this approach, NIMD invited youth representatives from three Dutch political parties, CDA, VVD and PvdA, to join the camp and share insights from their own contexts.

Kevin Klinkspoor from CDA, Martijn Bolkestein from VVD and Bo Lemmens from PvdA led interactive sessions. They shared their experience and invited discussion on topics including lobbying for youth interests, and coalition building on youth priorities.

“Mixing youth from different Jordanian political parties with peers and experts from Dutch political parties resulted in a political mosaic we have not seen before” said Bashar Al- Khatib, NIMD’s Country Director in Jordan.

The participants noted the many similarities between politically active youth in the Netherlands and in Jordan. Youth from both countries highlighted similar challenges they face when engaging in politics. These included working with senior leadership in their political parties, and confronting stereotypes faced by women and youth in politics.

A holistic approach to youth political engagement

Experienced local trainers also delivered targeted sessions designed to meet the needs of the Jordanian youth party members. Together, these sessions offered a diverse and dynamic training programme rooted in real-life experience and collaborative learning.

“We decided to go with experimental out-of-the-box methods. That’s why we applied a mixture of training sessions and dialogue sessions on different topics, and utilized tools and themes of emancipatory education. Our aim was enhancing participants’ critical and creative thinking skills,” said Al- Khatib.

The programme included sessions covering topics such as:
• Trust-building;
• Structuring and organizing youth wings;
• Advocacy and member engagement;
• Aligning party activities with youth priorities;
• Planning and managing youth-led initiatives;
• Lobbying and alliance-building;
• Critical and creative thinking in political strategy.

In the evenings, participants explored broader themes surrounding politics and society. These sessions focused on the relationship between art, music and politics. The conversations provided space for participants to reflect on how political engagement intersects with personal identity, values and creative expression.

“Our main takeaway from the event is that organizing such an activity and providing sessions on many topics by different trainers showed immediate results compared to traditional capacity building activities (2 or 3 days training with the same expert for example). Exposing participants to many topics and many experts in a relatively short period of time instigated their creative and critical thinking skills much faster compared to other settings.” said Al- Khatib.

Youth as active changemakers

This initiative reflects NIMD’s broader mission to foster inclusive and responsive political systems by supporting young people as active changemakers within their parties. As Jordan implements reforms aimed at deepening democratic governance, initiatives like the Political Youth Camp play a crucial role in building a new generation of political leaders equipped with the tools, knowledge and networks to make a lasting impact.

Organized by NIMD in close cooperation with the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

The initiative is part of the EU-funded programme “Support to Democratic Reforms in Jordan”, implemented by Expertise France, NIMD, Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), and Canal France Internationale (CFI).