Countering Islamophobia: Reflections of an Unofficial Ambassador

April 11, 2016

By Benjamin Orbach

12 min read

Thirteen years ago, Sundos, a slight young woman wearing a headscarf, approached me in a cafeteria at the University of Jordan in Amman. She’d written an essay in English about what she did during the summer and asked me to review it before she handed it in to her teacher.

When this young muhajiba approached me (a foreigner and stranger) and asked for help, she crossed a cultural chasm. When I responded positively, I was transformed from a 27-year-old graduate student into an unofficial ambassador. I trace the origins of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors initiative to that optimistic moment.

America’s Unofficial Ambassadors is a citizen diplomacy initiative aimed at increasing the number of Americans who volunteer in areas of human development throughout the Muslim world. During the past four years, the program has sent close to 100 U.S. nationals from different faiths and backgrounds to volunteer in nine countries throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The volunteers stay for a week to one year.

The premise behind our work is that each of us can make a difference in America’s multi-faceted and increasingly complicated relationship with the people of the Muslim world. Further, we can each participate in building mutual understanding by sharing our experiences at home, through blog posts, published essays and community presentations. By (our own) conservative estimate, we’ve reached 100,000 Americans with our mission.

Upon reflection, I find my experience in Jordan and then in Egypt — I had to evacuate Jordan when the war in Iraq began — to be a surprising journey ground in persistent idealism, intellectual curiosity and good luck. Today, Jordan is a hub of expat activity, from international development workers to foreign students to employees of Fortune 500 firms.

In 2002, I was just one of a handful of Americans at the university, and really in all of Amman. For decades, Cairo was a mecca for Arabic language students; in 2013-14, a paltry 37 American students studied abroad in Egypt. I backpacked through Syria by myself in 2002 — today the country is mired in a conflict with no end in sight. While much in these places has changed recently, my experiences were, for me, a building block to a career of creating partnerships between America and the Muslim world.

On the morning of 9/11, I was headed to Arabic class when I found out about the attacks. I’d written my Master’s thesis on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida that spring, but in the days after 9/11, I became transfixed with a need to know what regular people in Arab countries were saying about the attacks, bin Laden and the United States.

I realized that I needed to speak Arabic well to find answers to my questions. That summer, I set off on a yearlong quest that led me to smoke-filled salons and open-air coffee shops.

I engaged in what seemed like 1,001 discussions about U.S. foreign policy, the Jews (I’m one of them) and 9/11. Those debates were great for my language acquisition in that they were repetitive to the point of being scripted. I played the role of unofficial spokesman as I tried to dispel conspiracy theories and shed light on questions about the war with Iraq, my country’s intentions for the region and the U.S. visa process.

The more interesting conversations, though, were the ones that went beyond the theater of these sessions and my flashcard-bolstered “talking points” on weapons of mass destruction. These other, one-on-one conversations, usually while sitting in a car or a similarly private but public place, were about the details of affording to marry, aspirations for an easier life somewhere else, and our culture that streamed across borders — we all loved Mariah Carey (except me).

Salah, an Egyptian cook, taught me about the face of poverty in the absence of economic opportunity; I learned from Kholood, a Jordanian teacher, about the deficiencies of education systems that don’t foster critical thinking skills; and Fadi, a Palestinian refugee, gave me insight into the ins and outs of leading a second-class citizen’s life.

These conversations weren’t characterized by “woe is me” hardship. Instead, I felt a lot of warmth and gained new insights into the concept of hospitality, the culture of family and being part of historic places and traditions. I often wondered if Egyptian or Jordanian visitors to the United States were treated as well as I was treated by my hosts. My year of persistent idealism in the face of harsh current events wasn’t an easy experience, but it was fulfilling, so much so that whenever I hear Arabic, I can’t help but smile. I don’t think there are a lot of Americans who feel that way today.

During the course of that year, I felt that it was useful to engage in respectful dialogue with people who had never met an American before. When I helped Sundos with her English homework and later taught her to use a computer, I knew that I was doing something worthwhile. I was helping her to achieve something she wanted by teaching her an important skill set. My efforts were their own reward, but they also contributed to a larger vision we shared for the future.

Publishing “Live from Jordan”

Benjamin Orbach, founder of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors, stands with a student at the Sukma Bangsa school in Aceh, Indonesia.

When I came home in August 2003, I was shocked by how much my opinions had developed compared with the discourse that prevailed in the wake of the Iraq war. I wrote a book about my experience in an effort to share the stories of the people I met and the common ground we inhabit.

When Live from Jordan was published, I traveled around the United States speaking to groups, mostly at Jewish Community Centers, about the realities beyond our stereotypes. I felt that each of us has a responsibility to engage with and even educate “our own” on difficult topics; if we don’t, no one will, at least with the potential to have an impact. Every audience asked me why I used the term “Palestine,” but there was always someone else who asked, “What is it that I can do to make a difference?”

In answering that second question, a three-fold problem troubled me.

First, there are societal challenges that people face in communities across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, whether that is attaining a quality education or landing a job that offers a path to dignity. For the most part, local resources will not meet these challenges, and external resources, such as foreign assistance, are not forthcoming.

Second, people in these countries think they know America because of our entertainment industry or our foreign policy choices, but they actually have never met an American; there is little in-person interaction. That absence of exchange is a breeding ground for demonization. And third, I found a similar reservoir of ignorance about the Middle East and Islam among my fellow Americans; Muslims were flag burners, angry young men and misogynists, not happy, sad and complicated individuals like us.

Years later, we are addressing these three challenges with America’s Unofficial Ambassadors. Each of our unofficial ambassadors — from university students to elementary-school teachers — commits to achieving three things: to have an impact by supporting a hand-picked school or local organization in implementing its mission; to dispel stereotypes of Americans by engaging in respectful cultural diplomacy; and to build mutual understanding at home by sharing his or her experiences.

Volunteers reflect optimism & demonstrate intellectual curiosity

Rob Handerhan (center), a senior at The College of New Jersey, volunteered as an English teacher at a cultural center in Tajikistan in summer 2015. He is pictured here with two of his students.

During the past four years, the majority of our unofficial ambassadors have been 18- to 24-year-olds. They have volunteered in a number of ways, from teaching French in a shepherding village in Morocco, to designing a website for the only autism nongovernmental organization in Tajikistan, to training domestic abuse counselors in art therapy in Indonesia.

Our young volunteers have turned out to be the demographic that not only has the most time and money to contribute, but also possess that requisite idealism and intellectual curiosity to make a difference.

Most of our unofficial ambassadors fall into one of two categories: “aspiring activists” out to make a difference on specific issues or “accidental advocates” who come from the cluster of worldwide do-gooders interested in helping others while enjoying their own adventure.

For example, in the summer of 2015, Rob Handerhan, a senior at The College of New Jersey, volunteered as an English teacher at a cultural center in Tajikistan. Rob taught eight classes every week. While he isn’t a professional teacher, his students, from teenagers to Ministry of Justice employees, gained from the enthusiasm he brought to the classroom. He did things that were different from the norm, like using Beyoncé’s If I Were a Boy to teach the second conditional (i.e. “If I won a million dollars, I would …”).

Rob, an “aspiring activist,” served as an unofficial ambassador in part because he cares about countering Islamophobia. A history major with an interest in the Islamic world, he took being a citizen diplomat seriously, striving to speak Farsi and ready with a smile, hello or a handshake at all times. After returning home, he presented his experience at Busboys and Poets, a popular restaurant in Washington, D.C., and on campus to social science and language classes.

In response to Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments on his campaign trail, Rob reflected, “When I think about my Tajik friends and students’ hopes for living and working abroad, I recall their desire to access better employment and educational opportunities so that they could then bring what they learned and earned back home to better their lives, the lives of their family members, and their community in general. Everyone I met was committed to enacting positive change in their country. And, in stark contrast to the fear and hate surrounding this same debate in America, everyone I met was incredibly welcoming and generous and treated me as an honored guest in Tajikistan.”

Rob may choose any number of career paths when he graduates. If he works on these issues professionally, the experience he gained as an unofficial ambassador will serve as a professional building block. Rob may one day write a book on the role that the arts can play in combating Islamophobia and may become a thought-leader on these issues.

Role of “accidental advocates

Katrina Marks (left), a senior at Villanova University, volunteered in Zanzibar in summer 2015 with the Forum for African Women Educationalists, a non-governmental organization that supports the empowerment of women and girls through training courses and advocacy.

Yet, as I think about fostering mutual understanding in America today, the contributions made by our “accidental advocates” are no less impactful than those of our “aspiring activists.”

Katrina Marks, a senior at Villanova University, was another of our summer 2015 unofficial ambassadors. She volunteered in Zanzibar with the Forum for African Women Educationalists, a non-governmental organization that supports the empowerment of women and girls through training courses and advocacy.

Katrina researched and wrote elements of funding proposals, developed content for FAWE’s social media, managed their Web-based platforms and participated in workshops on sexual harassment and science, technology, engineering and math programming. Katrina is interested in oral history and the study of collective memory, so after work, she would regularly visit Zanzibar’s Old Slave Market. She studied how local tour guides explained the history of the island’s slave trade and she gathered research for her senior thesis.

Katrina was drawn to volunteering in Zanzibar as a chance to do something different and to answer her own questions about a part of the world she found admittedly scary.

Though she studied abroad in China and visited Europe, she recalled: “I didn’t have Muslim friends before I went to Zanzibar. And then I did. I spent six weeks working at a female empowerment NGO with four brilliant, passionate, extremely hardworking Muslim women. I don’t suggest that I learned everything I needed to know about the complicated and diverse religion of Islam in six weeks and by talking to four people. … But I was tired of being stuck in my own head, of feeling fear when I see a man with brown skin and a backpack, of mispronouncing the names of my classmates.”

Spreading the word in Michigan

When she returned home to Kent City, Michigan, a town of 1,100 people, Katrina gave a presentation about her experience to the Historical Society, a group of seniors, most of whom attended the same Lutheran church that Katrina’s family has attended for nine generations.

The presentation wasn’t about, “What I did last summer … with the Muslims.” Rather, Katrina spoke about an exotic and less-understood place where she worked with the local community to empower young women and lived in a foreign culture that challenged her to consider new ideas — like whether it was more respectful (or less) for her to wear the hijab.

At the presentation, Katrina thought she would get a lot of questions about living in a Muslim country. Instead, she said, “A few people asked for clarification on geography. Some more wanted to know what food I ate. Only one person asked how my mother handled my time abroad. As the town history buffs, they wanted to know more about my research of the slave trade.”

Katrina may have traveled to Zanzibar looking for answers for herself, but she became an advocate for tolerance in the process. Because of her local roots, she was able to reach an audience that we never could have connected with from Washington, D.C. With her presentation, she framed her experience in a Muslim community into the common story of cross-cultural engagement in a foreign land, one that a World War II veteran in the audience identified with as being similar to his own experience overseas.

Closing the familiarity gap

I’m sure that being Muslim is a special feeling, but being Muslim in America has become special in the wrong way in recent years. Muslims have become the “Other” to an exponential factor, with just 38% of Americans saying they know a Muslim, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center poll. A December 2015 Bloomberg poll finds that 65% of Republican primary voters favor “a temporary ban on all Muslims who are citizens of foreign countries from entering the United States.”

These polls suggest the familiarity gap is widening. More than 300,000 American students studied abroad in 2013-14, but just 2.4% of them studied in a Muslim-majority country according to the Institute of International Education. It is telling how few young Americans are developing networks and having experiences in parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia that will enable them to, at a minimum, correct hate speech from their own personal experience, if not serve as an agent of larger change.

More “accidental advocates” required

While I personally identify with “aspiring activists,” our need for more “accidental advocates” is striking.

The basic conclusion from any positive cross-cultural interaction is that while each of us has different pieces of culture to offer the world, we are all the same, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or citizenship. Reaching that basic conclusion, though, requires either first-hand experience or the trust to believe someone who shares one’s experience, like Katrina at the Kent City Historical Society.

Muslims are not exempted from this cross-cultural conclusion. My hope is that America’s Unofficial Ambassadors and similar programs will fill this growing familiarity gap. If we succeed, there will be a range of metrics that tell that story, from literacy rates and economic opportunities to perceptions of Americans in different places overseas.

Given the state of our discourse today, though, the most important metric may well be the number of Americans who react to outlandish proposals by some presidential candidates with a shake of the head and an evidence-based explanation for how the guy just doesn’t know what he is talking about. As Katrina put it, “I was scared when I went to Zanzibar, and I am still scared today. But not of Muslims. I am scared of ignorance. That is the danger.”

Benjamin Orbach is the Founding Director of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors at Creative Learning, a Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit organization. This blog originally appeared in The Islamic Monthly. He can be reached at [email protected].

The path to youth engagement & empowerment in Jordan

February 2, 2016

5 min read

Youth here are starving to participate in social, economic and political decision-making processes.

Nearly 70 percent of the country’s population is aged 30 or younger, according to the United Nations, and 22 percent of the population is from 15 to 24 years old. However, the World Bank finds that youth unemployment is around a staggering 28 percent, and there are few avenues for youth to participate in political process.

In January, Creative’s youth employment team visited eight governorates in Jordan, including Amman, and spoke to more than 250 young men and women—representing youth political parties, youth councils, youth with disabilities and youth serving organizations. We also carried out rapid assessments of existing community assets, which can be used to better serve marginalized youth.

Our goal was to identify the major challenges these young people face and to hear directly from them about their needs and aspirations to thrive. We also aimed to learn about youth-led strategies and initiatives that have already been successful, and to consider ways to scale them up.

Widespread obstacles, multiple marginalizations

Sabri A. Rbeihat, former Minister of Political Development and of Parliamentary Affairs in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, speaks about youth issues in Jordan. Photo by: Ashraf Mohamed

In general, Jordanian youth report significant economic, social and political challenges. In our interviews, we found that youth feel excluded and marginalized by government, community leaders and other adults, particularly in at-risk communities.

In the economic realm, youth face high levels of unemployment and/or underemployment, particularly among university graduates and women. There is also a mismatch between youth workforce skills and job market demands—including soft skills, work-readiness, and practical, entrepreneurial and technical skills.

The lack of economic opportunity and inadequate training is discouraging many young job seekers and students, as one 25-year-old man in Ma’an described.

“There should be providers to help youth in job placement, work-readiness and soft skills,” he said. “I stopped my study at the high school after being an A+ student, because my brothers graduated from universities and couldn’t find jobs.”

Youth with disabilities feel that they have access to even fewer opportunities.

As one 28-year-old woman with a disability in Ma’adaba said, “Disabled youth are marginalized and no care is given to them. We need laws and regulations that enforce the employment rights of disabled youth.”

Already up against high rates of poverty, many youth also lack access to finance and collateral for credit to fund their initiatives.

In the social and political realms, youth have little trust in national and local government institutions. They see that laws and regulations on governance, elections, labor and decentralization are not youth-friendly. Nongovernmental organizations and community development centers are perceived as being weak.

Another challenge is limited intellectual property rights protection for youth-led businesses, so there are few incentives for and many threats to innovation and entrepreneurship

Compounding these obstacles, more than 1.3 million refugees and asylum seekers are currently in Jordan, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, adding pressure to already strained political and economic systems.

These challenges that youth encounter have helped to contribute to increased crime, violence, drug use and radicalism.

What Jordan’s youth want

After concluding our discussions, field visits, surveys and questionnaires around Jordan, our team gained invaluable insight into what youth really want and what types of strategies might work to meet their needs.

In terms of inclusiveness, youth want to engage in the design, planning, implementation, and evaluation of projects to ensure sustainability.

As one 18-year-old said, “We [youth] must be involved…. We receive supply-driven programs that do not meet our needs. This non-inclusive approach will never lead to sustainable programs for youth. We must be engaged in designing the right programs for our own needs.”

The desire to engage is certainly there. Another youth said that he and his peers are “starving to participate in social, economic and political decision-making processes” if only they had the tools to advocate for themselves as a group on important issues.

Funders and implementers of development projects, as well as local government ministries and officials, should take to heart.

As one youth put it, we must speak to Jordanian youth “in their own language”—referring to our approach of truly engaging youth in planning and leading change on the issues that matter to them.

In the governorates we visited, our team observed outstanding ideas and initiatives created by and led by youth. We also garnered excellent media coverage from local radio stations, local press and newspapers eager to celebrate the creativity and success of Jordan’s youth.

Bringing in government & the private sector

Youth, civil society representatives and government officials speak about the challenges facing youth in the country and assets and ideas to overcome them. Photo by: Ashraf Mohamed

For genuine youth engagement and empowerment to occur, we must widen involvement to include not just youth but youth allies, such as the private sector and government partners, from mayors to governors to ministers.

At an event our team hosted called “The Path to Youth Participation and Empowerment in Jordan,” attendees had the critical opportunity to exchange ideas with these business leaders and policymakers.

By bringing these key stakeholders together, we were able facilitate the sharing of lessons learned from youth initiatives across different governorates and catalyze coordination among the stakeholders on youth strategies.

This meeting was also a key step in building and strengthening relationships between local and national governments and between the private sector and civil society, including youth serving organizations.

The way forward for real results

At the end of our trip—having fostered an extensive coalition of allies to empower youth and extended our thorough, nuanced understanding of the challenges and issues Jordanian youth themselves identify—we are even more certain that real change can only occur when youth themselves are involved in every stage of creating change. And we have field-tested many innovative methods and approaches with the very young people we seek to serve.

But perhaps our most important accomplishment of the journey was to leave behind a sense of optimism among Jordanian youth that together we can design and implement initiatives that will bring real results and real opportunity for them to engage in the social, economic and political life of their communities and country in a meaningful way.

With reporting by Elizabeth Mullen

Ali Kamel is a Senior Associate in Economic Growth at Creative Associates International.

Elizabeth Mullen is a Program Associate in Workforce Development and Youth Employment at Creative Associates International.

Jordan – Learning Environment Technical Support

Program

1 min read

Creative’s Learning Environment Technical Support program worked with the Jordanian Ministry of Education to improve the atmosphere in 120 public schools. It focused on safety, health, caring, and engagement. The program was supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The program supported these efforts by introducing best practice approaches at the school level. Educators identified the most pressing needs and led the community in addressing them. Activities included anti-bullying seminars, school clean-up days, art contests, and teacher training courses.

The Learning Environment Technical Support program expanded the Ministry of Education’s ability to support schools as they tried to improve their learning environments and increased the overall capacity of local training institutions.

The program built awareness within school communities to create positive learning behaviors and higher school achievement. It also made significant strides in reducing violence and bullying, as well as increasing healthy behaviors and effective communication between schools and the community.

Within three semesters, nearly 50 percent of participating schools demonstrated that the program interventions were correlated with a drop in negative behavior. Girls’ schools showed the highest drop in negative behaviors, at 71 percent, with boys demonstrating a drop of 45 percent.

Jordan – Education Reform Support Program

Program

2 min read

Education has played a transformative role in the development of Jordan from an agrarian, subsistence economy to a predominantly urban, industrialized nation. In July 2003, the government launched the Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy initiative, which is intended to upgrade the education sector and provide more comprehensive and appropriate services to its graduates.

The five-year Education Reform Support Program partnered with Jordan’s Ministry of Education to achieve the country’s national reforms. Professional development for teachers and principals, high-quality early childhood education, targeted training for youth in technology and life skills for careers and robust data collection combined to transform how children and youth learn in Jordan. The program was supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Together with the Ministry of Education, Creative’s program created a cadre of trainers equipped with skills to develop qualified and confident teachers through professional development. The program prepared 475 Ministry Trainers and reached almost 12,000 educators, principals and school supervisors with professional development training designed to improve pedagogy and learning in schools.

Creative teamed with the Ministry of Education to launch a Data Use for Decision Making initiative that allows Jordan’s educators to have access to information such as attendance rate and student achievement. Creative trained school principals and staff on the new uses of data, how to generate reports and how to analyze the data when making important decisions.

The program also worked to improve early childhood education, refurbishing 544 public kindergarten classrooms nationwide, renovating school playgrounds and training more than 5,000 kindergarten and grade one through three teachers on how to best use new facilities and teaching methods for better student learning outcomes. The Early Childhood Education programs improved the learning environments for more than 10,000 students.

For children unable to attend public kindergarten, the Education Reform Support Program’s Parent-Child Package program provided an at-home education program with trained teachers. Simultaneously, mothers were trained on strategies to use at home to promote their children’s school readiness, like using play dough to write letters, puppets to teach sharing and beans to count. More than 2,450 mothers participated.

Through its focus on Youth, Technology and Career Development, the program improved the confidence, learning, life skills and workforce readiness of youth nationwide. The School to Career initiative, a career counseling and job skills program for youth, reached more than 130,000 youth in 330 schools. The Life Skills through Sports program reached another 20,000 students.

Working closely with the Ministry of Education throughout the five-year program to build national capacity in education, the Education Reform Support Program ensured the continued success of Jordan’s schools and students and the sustainability of educational reforms.

Minister Latouf: Achieving comprehensive and sustainable development demands activating the role of women

June 21, 2010

2 min read

A training session on the foundations of development and local community mobilization began yesterday for trainers and practitioners in the field of community service. The program took place at the Federation’s headquarters under the auspices of the General Jordanian Women’s Federation with the collaboration of Creative Associates International.

During the opening ceremony, the Minister of Social Development, Hala Latouf called on the program participants, all of whom were Jordanian women, to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

She said that the responsibility of empowering women and increasing their public participation, especially in decision making, is not the Government’s responsibility alone, but is also a social responsibility involving the private sector and civil society organizations alike.

She added that achieving comprehensive and sustainable development requires activating the role of women, who make up half of our society, to stand alongside men to increase the productive capacity of the national economy and to improve the standard of living which contributes to improving family standards and that of society as a whole, stressing the need for women to participate in decision making processes.

The president of the Federation, Nuha Maayta, expressed her thanks and appreciation for the efforts made by the Minister of Development to invite this international organization to present their expertise and hold this type of training session under the auspices of the contribution of the Federation, to provide trained, young qualified cadres to lead innovation in the service of their local communities.

The representative of Creative Associates International, Nuran Kolan, pointed out that her organization, which is based in Washington and is headed by women, works in 20 countries around the world and aims for development, change and stabilization in local communities following conflicts.

Participants in the two day training program were from development, political and social development ministries, the city council of Greater Amman, Jordan University, municipalities, and women’s associations and organizations.

Original Article (Arabic)

JORDAN: Teachers’ Internships Aim to Help Students Find Jobs

June 1, 2010

3 min read

Having raised literacy levels throughout the country to nearly 100 percent, Jordan is on track to meet its Millennium Development Goals, yet for the country’s leadership this is just the beginning of a long-term vision. High on the agenda of “next steps” is workforce development and the lowering the country’s youth unemployment rate which stands at 31 percent.

Young Jordanians aged 12 to 30 years number approximately 2.2 million and represent 40 percent of the country’s population. The broader region has some 100 million young people aged 12 to 24. In this fast-changing region and world, young Jordanians need new career opportunities to contribute to their nation’s future.

With assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Jordan’s education ministry has put a slight twist on job training. Rather than send students into private sector internships, they are sending their school counselors to experience the business world. In turn, these counselors will be better prepared when advising their students as to job opportunities, the culture of the workplace and the basic “dos and don’ts” of being successful employees and interns. Jordan and the United States have had a free trade agreement in place since December, 2001.

Dr. Jamil Shogairat, Director of Education for the Ministry of Education in Aqaba recently congratulated a group of counselors that had finished their internships. “This will give students new chances to be involved with the private sector. We hope to establish additional partnerships as we also need to have engineers, pilots and other professions to further develop Jordan,” said Dr. Shogairat “Education is one of Jordan’s main pillars for transforming its workforce. We have many dreams for our young.”

These hands-on learning opportunities are being managed by the USAID-supported Jordan Education Reform Support Program (ERSP). To date the Program has placed 78 school counselors in internships in the private sector where they receive dynamic real-world training so they can help students be self-confident and professional when they began their journey into the workforce. The Program will train approximately 330 counselors over the next 4 years, an experience which will enable counselors to share first-hand their experience with students as they participate in the different components of the School-to-Career program.

Manar Jamal, a counselor at the Al Hashemieh School for Girls, interned at a company that provides beverage and food for cruise ships. “Workplace Internship is a new experience for me. During my internship I practiced operational work and learned what supplies the ships will need on their voyages,” said Ms. Jamal. “My experience will benefit students because they will learn about new opportunities for jobs.”

The Jordan Tourism Board previously identified the tourism section as the largest export sector and the second employer of human resources. In 2007, the Tourism industry constituted one of the largest income generating sources for Jordan, making up 11.2 per cent of its GDP. Aqaba, for instance, is the third point of the “Golden Triangle” which comprises the 2,000-year-old “rose red city” of Petra and Wadi Rum, with red dunes and mountains. Because an estimated 7.1 million tourists visit Jordan every year, the country’s leadership is emphasizing tourism as a career option. In Aqaba, alone, it is expected that 10,000 new jobs will be created over the next 5 years.

The School-to-Career program aims to provide hands-on labor market exploration activities for public school students between grades 8 to 11, many of whom come from low to mid socio-economic backgrounds. Traditionally, such students believed that working in public sector (mainly the army and public security) was the best career option for them. The program engages 10th graders who are choosing whether to continue their academic education or pursue vocational courses.

Ra’eda Slehat, a counselor from the 8th Street School for Girls had her internship in a shipping company. Ms. Slehat said, “It will be good for my students to learn that shipping is an employment opportunity that had not been considered before and they I will help explain to them what kind of skills they need.”

School-To-Career helps these school counselors deliver career counseling for students to navigate self assessment, the influence of family and peer pressure, and how to identify sources of information on labor markets. The program helps students map the workforce to better understand available career options and to identify the skills they will need to realize their goals. The program offers students career days and workplace internships during summer vacation.

—Hadeel Abu Shama, ERSP Youth, Technology and Career Development Component Leader

JORDAN: Training Workshop Boosts Teachers’ Enthusiasm, Now Teaching More than a Job

March 12, 2010

2 min read

Jordan’s Ministry of Education is committed to producing teachers whose skills are sought after in a knowledge economy. This strategic undertaking is being assisted by the U.S. Agency of International Development’s newly launched Education Reform Support Program (ERSP). Within the first nine months of implementation, ERSP is working hard to support training programs that boost the professional development of teachers.

In Jordan, teaching is a profession that has been historically regarded as boring. Teachers often felt static and lacked resources to foster creativity within their classrooms. This lack of enthusiasm was deadly to students’ motivation to learn. Now, after participating in a series of four teacher training workshops, nearly 581 teachers have been given a glimpse of what their profession may be like as more than just a job.

“This is the first time I stay interested for three hours straight in a workshop, I would have definitely regretted it, if I had missed it!,” noted Ashraf, a teacher who was initially cynical about the outcome of the workshops. Accordingly, after the ERSP workshops, Ashraf and other teachers are more motivated, and are gaining a greater understanding of the communication skills required to promote modern teaching techniques in their classrooms.

“This is the first time I stay interested in a workshop for three hours straight, I would have definitely regretted it, if I had missed it!,” said Ashraf, a teacher initially cynical about the outcome of the workshops.”

Over the course of six weeks, beginning in November 2009, 28 schools in 7 directorates of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan participated in the ERSP-managed workshops. Inspired by the workshops, a group of teachers decided to experiment with a non-traditional classroom format. In this experiment, two teachers specializing in two different subjects jointly lead a class to create a multidisciplinary lesson. In Irbid, a social studies and art teacher joined forces to create a class entitled, “Archeological Sites in Jordan.”

Spurring kids’ interest in education requires vision. The workshops’ neutral environment generated in-depth discussions between principals and teachers who together created a vision for each school. This combined effort is leading to staff becoming personally invested in their school mission, fostering basic teamwork skills and laying the groundwork to improve relationships throughout the school community.

The workshops have also served as a catalyst for several participating schools to develop monthly magazines to serve as communication channels between teachers, students and parents. “The magazine”, suggested one principal, “can develop in the future to also reach the local community to make them more aware of the schools’ accomplishments.”

ERSP is managed by Creative Associates International of Washington, D.C.

— Costandi Tadros