The Syrian Arab Republic participated with a group of its male and female students in the regional training program via the Internet, which is organized by the UNESCO Regional Office for Science in the Arab Countries in Cairo during the period from August 14th, to September 6th, 2020, entitled "Arab Youth Against Discrimination and Stigmatization in the Time of COVID19" in addition to 66 students from different countries of the Arab world.
The program targeted ages from 15 to 30 years old from various Arab countries, to develop their abilities to recognize the manifestations of discrimination and social stigma, which witnessed a remarkable increase with the COVID19 crisis, as well as learning ways to resist them through constructive social initiatives.
The adolescent group was trained over a week with 4 interactive sessions, and the youth group over four weeks with 12 interactive sessions; each session lasted three hours and this training provided a number of self-learning hours for both groups.
The Ministry of Education's training program included (5) male and female students (15 to 18 years old). Areen Radi, Ahmed Qaddoura, Abdul Rahman Ataba, Ghaith Al Haw, Maya Issa. The Syrian participating students in the program expressed their happiness at participating, and stressing that it was rich with important information that added a lot to them to confront the problem of discrimination and stigmatization in the time of COVID19.
The program sought to achieve a number of goals, including: developing young people's understanding of the causes of stigma and discrimination and their harmful effects, both individually and socially, with a focus on discrimination resulting from the emerging coronavirus pandemic and raising awareness of the ways in which the discrimination phenomenon is spread through the media, speeches and negative images posted on social media that reinforce stereotypes, besides encouraging youth to become active and positive agents in their societies by working on producing individual and collective project's ideas to combat discrimination in all its forms in their societies.