Siraj champions strategizing. (Photo: Sheba Youth Foundation, Yemen.)
Yemeni Youth: Champions of Digital Resilience
The Siraj pilot project has been empowering local youth to push back against digital harms. Along the way, many have become genuine champions of digital resilience. We’d like you to meet four of them.
Digital harms are real harms, especially amid humanitarian crisis. In Yemen, we see disinformation fuelling gender-based and sectarian violence, undermining public health efforts, and eroding trust in NGOs. We see online scams, blackmail and other digital attacks harming people at their most vulnerable. Too often, we see digital channels being turned against ordinary Yemenis, by extremists on all sides of conflict.
That’s the context for Siraj, a pilot project we’ve been supporting alongside the Taiz-based Sheba Youth Foundation. To tackle digital threats, Siraj integrates two very different tools: proven AI-supported mitigation methods … but also the energy and online smarts of local youth. Forty young women and men were selected for intensive training in digital safety and disinformation. They’ve gone on to respond to emerging digital threats, like the click-farm scam response we shared in December. All told, the group tracked 100+ threats and shaped five national awareness campaigns—online and on community radio—driving more than 600,000 user engagements.
Along the way, team members have become genuine champions of digital resilience. Some have gone on to deliver digital-safety training to more young people—for Siraj, but independently as well. Their Facebook page is a now gathering place for 6000+ young Yemenis looking to take ownership of their online lives. And many of these team members are finding ways to build awareness among expanding circles of family, friends and followers.
Meet four Siraj champions
With Siraj’s pilot phase wrapping up, Sheba staff sat down with participants to debrief their experience. Together, they’ve achieved a lot. But we’re equally impressed by how they’re taking their new expertise to their own communities, on their own. These Siraj champions show no signs of slowing down, and we’d like you to meet four of them.
Meet Wala’a
Meet Hamza
Meet Mohammed
Meet Tasneem
Learn more: About Siraj
A responsibility to act
Mohammed is helping people learn to resist digital harms and “information chaos,” especially in rural parts of the country.
After completing his Siraj training, Mohammed set out to share what he’d learned with people around him. He has published posts on disinformation through his personal Facebook page. He has brought his growing knowledge of digital harms to colleagues in his organization—and to the public through speaking engagements. And has held a series of digital-safety awareness sessions for women in his rural community—a first-of-its-kind initiative there.
