Houna aShabab is a group of 22 young cultural practitioners, and practitioners-to- be, who share similar career orientation in the field of culture in South Mediterranean countries. Group members were selected out of 179 applicants through an open call for participation, launched by Med Culture in April 2015.

As the group’s name clearly indicates it in Arabic, Houna aShabab offers its members with the opportunity to voice their needs, share their challenges and improve their career prospects through a set of tailor-made capacity development workshops.

Three training workshops are foreseen within this framework to contribute to Houna aShabab members’ personal and/ or collective initiatives through harnessing their skills, improving their employability chances, and promoting a better understanding of the role they could play in the development of cultural policies in their respective countries.

The workshops are also aimed at promoting exchanges and networking among Houna aShabab members as well as other players in the field of culture and relevant cross-cutting sectors.

Among the tackled themes: cultural entrepreneurship, employability and fundraising; pooling of resources, development of partnerships and networking, cultural policies at the national and municipal level.

Houna aShabab participants are also members of the respective Med Culture National Focus Groups. The members of Houna aShabab are also required to share the training they have received (good practices, contacts, etc) with their colleagues/peers.