Three interns from the Youth for Governance programme recently appeared on OTV and Radio Free Lebanon to talk about their summer inside the Ministry of Interior.

They were among 20 university students from across Lebanon who were placed at the heart of one of the Ministry’s most high-pressure tasks: running the municipal elections. Their experience took them from call centres to chatbots, and from scepticism about the public sector to a renewed sense of possibility.

For Christian Ghassibe, an architectural engineering student with a passion for elections, the scale of the job was staggering. Thirteen thousand polling stations. Twenty-six thousand staff. Countless details that had to be right before the first ballot was cast. “Managing the electoral process is a very difficult task,” he reflected. “Our role was to make sure the Ministry was ready, so that on election day there wouldn’t be many problems.”

Finding their place in the process

The interns quickly discovered there was no easing-in period. Preparation time was short, the pressure was high, and expectations were real. As Adam Abou Ezzeddine, a political science student, put it:

“We went in not knowing anything, did our research, and identified the systems to integrate. Even in a short time, we made improvements for the next elections.”

Some improvements were small but powerful. Interns joined a call centre team that phoned potential polling station staff to confirm attendance before election day, heading off the last-minute no-shows that can derail operations.

Others were structural. OS Ticketing, a complaint management system, replaced messy paper logs with a real-time, searchable database. Christian remembers how it transformed the Ministry’s operations room: when citizens posted about problems on social media — missing ink, disputes, confusion at polling sites — the system captured the issue instantly and sent it to the right officials. “The Ministry could intervene immediately,” he said, “even if the citizen never called to complain.”

Kyra Chacra, a law graduate, worked on the legal side, helping compile a clear plan of decisions the Ministry needed to issue before, during, and after the elections. This, she explained, “made the process easier and prevented them from failing.”

Tech that changes the conversation

For both the Ministry and the interns, the most visible leap was in transparency and citizen engagement. A live dashboard displayed turnout and complaints in real time for Ministry staff as well as journalists on site. “No more ‘black rooms’,” Kyra said. “This was a qualitative leap in how elections are conducted.”

The Ministry also piloted an AI-powered chatbot to answer common voter and candidate questions. Whether someone wanted to know where to vote, what documents were required to run for office, or the deadlines for withdrawal, the chatbot responded instantly. This reduced pressure on the call centre and made information accessible to anyone with a phone.

Rethinking the public sector

Before this summer, some of the interns shared the same assumption many young Lebanese hold: that the public sector is slow, outdated, and staffed by people unwilling to change. Inside the Ministry, they found something different: young, skilled civil servants eager to modernise and open to learning from the interns’ technology skills.

Christian admitted he was “genuinely surprised” by how many capable young professionals were already in the Ministry. Adam agreed, saying the experience convinced him “to give the public sector a chance.”

Lessons for the future

The experience also sparked ideas for the future. The interns believe Youth for Governance should be scaled up — from 20 students to hundreds — across all public institutions. They see potential for AI, data analysis and modern communication tools to become the norm in government, not the exception.

And perhaps most importantly, they left with a shift in outlook. For Christian, who had once thought about leaving Lebanon, the internship was a reason to reconsider. “We saw things starting to move towards positivity again,” he said. “There are opportunities.”

Kyra’s message to other young people was simple: “Be present. See it with your own eyes. You might find you can make a difference."

Why it matters

For Siren, the interns’ stories are proof that change happens when skilled young people and committed public servants work side by side, armed with the right tools and a shared purpose. In a short period of high-pressure election work, they delivered practical results, and perhaps something even more valuable: a little more trust in the systems that serve.