Global Youth Dialogue Conference, Amman, May 29-31

Oh My God!!, it has been soooo long since the last time I wrote something here!, I know… but this was soley due to the fact that I’ve been way over my head involved in a variety of youth initiatives that took me a way from blogging!.Last year, I participated in an American Jordanian youth dialogue that took place in Amman and revolved around U.S foreign policy in the Middle East,it was part of a series of dialogue conferences between American and Middle Eastern youth that took place in Cairo and Rabat as well. After the conference was over, a friend from the U.S and a member of the organising committee ,who co-founded a young and impressive organisation known as the Project On Middle East Democracy (POMED) which along with Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) was the main sponsor for the series,asked me if I would be interested in organising the conference this year, which is also part of a series of conferences in the same three cities.I gladly agreed and so we formed the conference planning committee which was consisted of me, a young impressive woman from the U.S who was on a Rotary scholarship in Jordan , and a very ambitious Medicine student from Jordan.

For the past nine months since we started, we have been meeting weekly and working on coming up with a general theme, developing the content and forming partnerships with local organisations in Jordan, fundraising , recruitment , and all that comes with organising a conference. We had good days and very overwhelmingly tiresome ones, but we enjoyed it, enjoyed every aspect of it, and we certainly loved the company of each other. The conference has finally materialised, we have a full set of panelists, one of them is the very impressive and talented young director of this forum, who will discuss with the young leaders from the U.S and the Middle East a variety of issues concerning cultural and educational exchange programmes, the situation in Iraq, youth cyber-activism, and U.S foreign aid initiatives. here are the panels and the respective panelists..

Youth Language, Culture, and Student Exchange Programs

• Alain McNamara, Executive Director of the Jordanian-American Commission for Educational Exchange (Fulbright)
• Osama Alshurafa, Director of Qasid Institute for Classical and Modern Standard Arabic
• Lina Arafat,Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Office in Jordan
• David Mees, Cultural Attaché, US Embassy, Amman

American Foreign Policy in Iraq: Effects on Jordanian Society

• Dr. Mahjoob Zweiri, the Centre for Strategic Studies, the University of Jordan
• David Greene, Political Counselor, American Embassy in Jordan
• Zainab al-Suwaij, Executive Director, American Islamic Congress
• Hala Sarraf , Founder, Iraq Health Aid

Youth Cyber-Activism

• Marc Lynch, Author of The New Arab Public and popular blog site, AbuArdvark.com
• Nicholas Seeley, Editor-in-Chief, JO Magazine, Jordan
• Esra’a Al Shafei, Director, Mideast Youth
• Ahmad Humeid, 360East.com

American Foreign Aid Programs for Political Reform

• Kathryn Stevens, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Jordan
• Nadia Busnaq,Director of Family Centre for Counseling and Guidance
• Anne Peters, US Fulbright Scholar and Doctoral Candidate, University of Virginia
• Sa’ed Karajah, Legal Advisor

Twenty-five young Americans and 25 young Middle Easterners will gather for three days in Amman to develop a set of recommendations on U.S foreign policy and political reform in the region, that will be distributed to governments in the region and in the United States. Two of the participants from each of the conferences will be elected to attend a one week siminar in Washington DC this July, and meet with decision makers in Capitol Hill and the State Department.

The conferences in Rabat and Cairo took place on the last weekend of April , and the first weekend of May respectively.The Conference reports from both conferences are available on POMED’s website , and more information can be found on the websites of both of our sponsor organisations POMED and AID.

I will definitely write more in the coming days about what I hope will be a wonderful experience.

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