Palestine Link Palestine Link started in 2012-2013 with its work with universities and 'hogescholen' to inform and mobilize students for justice and respect for human rights and peace in the Middle East. Hereby, Palestine Link wants to contribute to the general and political debate among students and political youth.

The implementation of the first phase of the project has been successful. In a relatively short period Palestine Link managed to reach out to many students and student organisations in at least 5 higher educational institutes. There is a growing acceptance of Palestine Link and its activities and students are keen to cooperate with us. The work has been done systematically and the strength of the strategy we developed lies in working with students and creating long term cooperationand network building, going forward step by step towards positioning Palestine Link as a credible partner and source of information/ portal to Palestine. During the last year, Palestine Linnk managed to organise many activities that helped increasing its visibility among students.

Palestine Link also reached out to many Palestinian students and mobilized them within the framework of the Palestinian Students Circle (currently counting 10 student members). In this context it is important to note that being at beginning stages Palestine Link will continue to work hard on positioning Palestine Link in a structural way through ongoing activities, initiating new contacts and involving more and more students as well as broadening the base for the distribution of its information and services and publicizing that through social media among others (Palestine Link also has a growing mailing list through which dissemination has happened of publications like the Palestine Link brochure & and information document addressing the issue of registration of Place of Birth of Palestinians in the Netherlands). In addition, one important goal of this project is to continue to mobilize Palestinian students, organise them and strengthen their knowledge base to equip them to participate pro-actively in the debate. I.e. the general debate in Dutch society about the Palestinian case, starting with preparing them to participate in the debate with other students and become "the ambassadors" of Palestine and the Palestinians first and foremost within the students circles, but also beyond students circles. In fact, these young Dutch Palestinians are the future hope of Palestine Link. During the first project a coregroup was initiated, for which a program was developed on the basis of a needs assessment for the coming period.

In the first phase of the project, Palestine Link chose for a strategy to focus its efforts on 4-5 universities / colleges at this stage, but keepingthe possibility open for contact and exploring possibilities beyond these five universities. During this second phase PL will work on two levels; i.e. consolidating the network already built by means of tailor-made activities, as well as exploring possibilities for new contacts / networks to reach out to new locations / students and student organizations.

The main strategic lessons learned in the first project period are:
a)	reaching out to student organisations with activities relevant to their studies like for example students in technical studies are interested in issues relevant to their studies e.g. in the College tour students in Twente were interested in the presentation of a speaker from the PHG.
b)	Reaching out and mobilizing Palestinian students has been successful through relevant activities like lectures, film screenings as well as social activities where they can meet with each other and socialize together.
c)	The use of new social media helped in reaching out to many students / youth especially through connecting to their own social media outlets, such as the Facebook pages of FFIPP, Basis, Hikma and others.

The following external factors influenced theproject in a positive way:
-	The high level of interest and good cooperation of student organisations gave the project a boost.
-	The cooperation with other organisations in the implementation of various activities enabled us to create synergies, extra activitiesand strengthened impact despite the limited financial resources available for the project.
-	The flexibility to make use of opportunities (especially hosting Palestinians while on a visit to the Netherlands for other purposes) and organising ad hoc activities with students was also another effective way to do much more than planned at the beginning of the original project.

This new project has been developed with an eye on the above.