RAMALLAH, May 14, 2014 (WAFA) – The
Central Election Commission (CEC) held Wednesday the closing ceremony for the
Electoral Awareness in Schools project for 2014.
The project was implemented in
cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOE&HE)
and funded by the EU.
In his opening speech, CEO Hisham
Kuhail, stated that the project is in line with CEC’s Strategic Plan 2014-2016
and is part of a series of activities the CEC implements with the aim of
raising electoral awareness among stakeholders, i.e. school and university
students, women, media CSOs and political parties.
Sergio Piccolo, the EU
representative who attended the ceremony, praised the work done by the CEC to
reach out to the students’ community in a way that enhances the values of
democracy and political participation.
On his part, the Director of
MOE&HE’s Education Supervision Section, Tharwat Zeid commended the project
as it reflects the spirit of cooperation and partnership between the CEC and
MOE&HE. Zeid stressed the importance of such extracurricular activities in
enriching students' education and awareness.
Dalia Abbasi, a winning student
from Jerusalem proudly described her experience through a speech she delivered
on behalf of the winning students, by stating that ‘’the project gave students
the chance to express themselves through elections and increased their
electoral awareness’’.
The closing ceremony was attended
by the teachers who supervised the implementation of the project in the
targeted schools in addition to the winning students who were awarded winning
certificates during the ceremony.
It should be indicated that the
2014 project targeted more than 7000 students from 9th grade in
a hundred schools in the West Bank during the ongoing school semester.. Similar
projects were successfully implemented in 2008, 2009 and 2013.
M.N./T.R.
