ESSAY WRITING GUIDE
Suggestions and tips to help you write a winning essay.

Middle East - Question 1:

• Share a story that shows how civil rights restrictions affect ordinary people. It can be a very simple example or something very dramatic – as long as it shows the pain of repression.
• Use vivid details to help readers experience the incident as if they were there. Imagine that some of your readers are young Americans who have grown up in freedom.
• Focus on the importance of individual rights. Show how repression restrictions individuality and identity, limiting people’s ability to define and express themselves as they want to.
• Read past winning essays that use a personal experience to illustrate larger social problems: Organizing a rally, Making an art exhibit, Writing for a teen magazine, Writing a report for school, & Corruption in the classroom.
• Strong essays do not simply complain, but also look toward a more positive future: How can civil rights activism challenge repression? Offer specific suggestions for what it will take to advance change.
• Read the short comic book about Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story to learn about an example of people working to address a local civil rights problem: where people are allowed to sit on public buses.
  
  

Middle East - Question 2:

• The question is asking you to make a kind of grant proposal. You have to envision a program and describe it as clearly as possible to convince the evaluators that you should receive the money.
• Make sure your program relates to addressing civil rights repression. As in Question One, the repression can be very simple (e.g., closing down a school newspaper) or very dramatic (e.g., forbidding women to drive).
• Your program can be simple or small, but it should still make a contribution to addressing a larger problem. For instance, you might do something in your local community that could be a model for other cities across the country.
• A good grant proposal describes the challenge addressed (i.e., the problem), the strategy used to address the challenge (i.e., the solution), the people who will be impacted by the program, and benchmarks (i.e., measurable goals) for assessing the success of the program.
• Good grant proposals also emphasize the qualifications (e.g., skills, talents, past experiences) of the individual or team applying for the funds. This is to show that there is a high chance you will succeed in implementing your program. Your team could include partners: friends, organizations, schools, etc.
• Good essays will provide vivid details that make the proposed project come to life. A reader should finish the essay with a clear idea in their mind of what the project will look like.
• For real-world examples of what young people have done in the Middle East with micro-grants, see this website with examples of local programs addressing religious freedom. The young people who organized these events used this planning form. If you want, you can use that form to help structure your essay.
• Another example program that might inspire you is the Cairo Human Rights Film Festival, which was organized by a former essay contest winner.
• Here are some guides on writing good grant proposals. But remember to keep your essay within the length restrictions of the essay contest (maximum 1,500 words).
• Think about these questions: If you win the essay contest, are you ready to implement the proposed program? What would it actually take to do this program?

Middle East - Question 3:

• Use specific details when describing the future. The more realistic, the better.
• The details should also explain how this better future was achieved. Just saying: “Now we have freedom” is not enough. Help readers understand how you got there. This past winning essays offers vivid details about how a campaign was organized.
• However, one weakness in this essay is that it does not discuss how outsiders in the US can help support the campaign. Strong essays will discuss in some way how American citizens can use their freedom to help achieve success (like Project Nur).
• The future you envision does not have to be perfect. Read this past winning essay as an example.
• Some essays imagine what seems like an impossible situation to show how much civil rights work remains to be done. For instance, this fake newspaper article describes a female judge in Jordan addressing honor killings.
• One American participant even created a website for the campaign he imagined as a way to show it in action.
• Read over the writing guides for Questions One and Question Two (scroll up). In some ways, this essay question is a combination of the two: it describes how a problem is overcome. It tells a story: the story of a campaign that succeeds.

United States - Question 1:

• Remember that this contest is focused on the struggle to protect basic civil rights: free expression, women’s equality, equality for minorities, etc. Your essay should profile an individual whose work embodies an aspect of that struggle.
• A good profile tells a human story and in the process conveys intellectual ideas. Your essay should convey the personal struggle the reformer faces – and how that struggle reflects larger challenges in the region.
• You can choose whom to profile. Just make sure the person relates to individual rights in the region. They may be of Middle Eastern background but working to make change from outside the region. They may be of American background now working in the Mideast. Or they may simply be a person in a community somewhere in the region.
• The person you profile does not have to be famous. If the person you profile is not a well-known public figure, make sure to include sources (links and/or footnotes) in your essay related to their work. Judges need to make sure the person exists.
• If you need help finding examples of possible reformers to profile, here are some reformers who have been profiled in our biweekly newsletter The CRIME Report:
• Rana Husseini
• Fathi Eljahmi
• Mansour Osanloo
• Rola Dashti
• Hanevy Ould Dahah
• Azar Nafisi
• Ahmed Benchemsi
• Mariam Bazeed
• Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani
• Ammar Abdulhamid
• Eman AbdElRahman
• Siham Bensadrine
• Ali Abdulemam
• Rabah Donquishoot
• Mohamed Benchicou
• Fahd Al-Qarni
• Kareem Amer
• Mohamed Bugaighis
• Dalia Ziada
• Ahmad Ghashmary
• Mohamed Abbou
• You are encouraged to do your own research, even trying to contact the individual you want to profile.
• To learn more about principles of nonviolent activism, see the Albert Einstein Institute as well as this resource from the American civil rights movement. And note this CRIME Report story about recent unrest in Iran using classic nonviolent conflict techniques.
• For examples of what Americans and other outsiders can do to help, here are some profiles from The CRIME Report:
• Jane Novak
• Nicholas McGeehan
• Layla Amjadi
• Ghazal Yazdanparast

United States - Question 2:

• Read carefully over SBZ’s essay. Look at how the author provides vivid details and a compelling story. A great essay will match her creative thinking and use of specific details and strategies.
• One element missing from SBZ’s essay is how people outside Saudi Arabia can help. Your challenge is to imagine creative ways American citizens could support. The larger question explored here is how American can leverage their freedom and the model of the American civil rights movement.
• For examples of what some Americans and other outsiders are doing to help Mideast civil rights campaigns, here are some profiles from The CRIME Report:

• Jane Novak
• Nicholas McGeehan
• Layla Amjadi
• Ghazal Yazdanparast

• It is important that your essay explain the strategy behind the outside support campaign. Google “strategy plan campaign” for resources on how to do effective planning.
• To develop your plan, it might help to identify the following items: resources, targets, team members, allies, ways to measure success, campaign demands, and mobilization tools.
• Think of all the potential resources in American society – on the national level and even in your local community – for a solidarity campaign.
• Think about targets of protest here in America that could be used to put pressure on leaders to end the ban on women driving.
• For inspiration, browse the testimony of outsiders who helped advance the civil rights movement in the American south. Look at the stories of people from the north, including whites, who went to the South to help.
• Question to consider: Will your movement need Americans to go to Saudi Arabia to help? If so, what can they realistically accomplish inside the context of restrictions in Saudi society.

United States - Question 3:

• Look over the guides to Question 1 and Question 2. Like those questions, this one requires clear details, tells a story, and describes a strategy of collaboration.
• In past years, many people who answered this kind of question did not provide enough detail. Make sure that changes don’t simply happen miraculously or overnight. The essay requires dreaming but should also strive to be realistic.
• One past winner actually created a website for the campaign he imagined as a way to show it in action.
• Be creative in how you imagine collaboration working. It can be between famous people or between ordinary citizens, even students.
• You can focus your essay on one specific civil rights challenge. You do not have to provide a region-wide vision of change.
• Questions to consider: What civil rights challenge in the region is most compelling to you? If you could throw yourself into helping address this challenge, what would you do? Tap your passions and then start dreaming.
• Try to avoid making general statements about how all people are connected. Instead, focus on how Americans and Middle Easterners can work together in practical ways to advance change.
• It’s not enough to say: “We can use Facebook and Twitter to connect people.” Instead, a strong essay would explain specifically how such technology would be leveraged to accomplish specific objectives.