Amideast Impact Newsletter - Spring 2021

NEWSLETTER

impact SPRING 2021

Dear Friend, Just over a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to cease in-person training and plan for early repatriation of students in our scholarship and exchange programs. That was just the beginning of a year of challenges, but one that was also a catalyst of new synergies and efficiencies in our programming.

One year later, our staff — the backbone of our operations — are as engaged as ever, whether working remotely or on-site despite stressful conditions.

Virtual exchanges are demonstrating that meaningful intercultural communication can occur when personto-person isn’t possible. Moreover, our scholarship students have managed to continue progressing in their degree programs despite COVID-imposed limitations, such as pared-down on-campus activities and reliance on remote instruction.

Similarly, we have maintained our ability to meet training needs with only minimal interruptions.

Following a brief period of retooling and capacity building, nearly all of our offices introduced distance and blended learning options soon after our offices closed. Through new and ongoing partnerships, such as the ones highlighted in this issue, we are empowering women, refugees, unemployed youth, and others by incorporating these new formats into our English language, employability skills, and other training programs. Also of significance, our introduction of

remote test proctoring is enabling us to better meet the region’s need for testing services. This issue also includes welcome news for American education abroad students. New partnerships will expand options for study in the region, and progress in fighting COVID-19 is making it possible to restart in-person programming in Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Even with the prospect of COVID-19 remaining with us in some form in the foreseeable future, we are upbeat about the possibilities ahead. We hope you share our optimism. As always, we appreciate your support of Amideast.

Theodore H. Kattouf President & CEO

TACKLING YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT IN MOROCCO

Emploi FBR continued despite the COVID-19 pandemic, making it possible for these young women to complete their training.

Like many unemployed youth in Morocco and across the MENA region, Abdelmoula Taib faced an uncertain future. Even though his English skills, honed during the two-year, Amideast-administered Access program, set him apart from his peers, he only had minimal work experience as a part-time math tutor, and his path to full-time employment was unclear. That changed after Abdelmoula joined “Emploi FBR,” an initiative that has improved the life prospects of 435 young Moroccans like him and promises to benefit many more. Underway since January 2020, it is a partnership between Amideast, the U.S. aid agency Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and its Moroccan arm, MCA Morocco, and Morocco’s Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training and its National Agency for Promotion of Employment and Skills. (Cont'd. on p. 2)

AMIDEAST EDUCATION ABROAD NEWS NEW PROGRAM IN DUBAI Amideast Education Abroad is pleased to announce a new partnership with the American University in Dubai (AUD) establishing direct enroll Amideast Education Abroad programming at AUD beginning with the spring 2022 semester.

The agreement was signed virtually on March 17

by Ambassador Theodore H. Kattouf, the president and CEO of Amideast, and Dr. David A. Schmidt, the president of AUD. Also present were Leslie Nucho, Amideast’s vice president for programs, and Dr. Elena Corbett, director of Amideast Education Abroad.

This exciting collaboration creates more opportunities for students of diverse academic majors to be part of a vibrant international living and learning community in the MENA region. AUD is accredited in both the United States and the UAE and recognized globally for the international diversity of both its faculty and student body. More than 105 nationalities are represented on AUD's state-of-the-art campus in Dubai Media City, comprising a rich academic and residential living community.

With ABET, AACSB, NAAB and numerous other accreditations, AUD's many schools and departments allow students from a wide variety of academic majors to engage their disciplines with professors and peers from around the world in a MENA region context famous for its global connectivity.

American University in Dubai campus

NEW PARTNERSHIP IN ARABIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN JORDAN An exciting new collaboration with the Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture in Jordan will enable Amideast to continue providing Arabic language programming of exceptional quality in both the faceto-face and concurrent online learning environments.

Amideast Education Abroad's commitment to its host communities and the critical issue of positionality of its program participants in Global South contexts finds a great partner in Sijal's embodiment of a scholarly and creative community dedicated to South-South and North-South exchange. As we look forward to better days for international education, we're grateful for the opportunity to do so with Sijal.

AMIDEAST EDUCATION ABROAD PROGRAMS RESUME IN 2021 Amideast Education Abroad looks forward to welcoming students to Morocco, Tunisia, and Jordan during the upcoming summer and fall terms. We have been maintaining ongoing updates about programming and COVID-19 protocols, processes, and procedures. While Jordan is currently experiencing a COVID-19 surge, at the time of writing we are planning for in-person summer programming as usual. The COVID-19 situation in Morocco and Tunisia, meanwhile, continues to improve, and the vaccination campaign in Morocco has been proceeding quickly and smoothly.

Due to issues of global vaccine inequity and for their own and their host communities' safety, summer program participants are strongly encouraged, if vaccines are available to them, to get vaccinated prior to departure. Assuming all U.S. adults will have access to vaccines prior to the start of the fall semester, we will require all participants to be vaccinated prior to departure.

Not traveling? The Virtual Learning and Cultural Exchange program is a flexible and affordable option that engages participants in all our education abroad host communities.

impact

NEWSLETTER | SPRING 2021

ROBOT FACILITATES VIRTUAL TEACHER TRAINING IN KUWAIT Thanks to the latest technology, the teachers and trainers in the most recent PCELT (Professional Certificate in English Language Teaching) course in Kuwait had a full professional development experience, despite the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. By Amideast’s introduction of the Swivl robot, the trainers were able not only to complete their virtual training and become licensed, but also to train 12 teachers with the same level of quality of all PCELT programs. In addition, the volunteer students for the practice teaching component participated online for the first time in PCELT history.

The Swivl robot, with its 360º tracking, sound and livestream capabilities, made it possible for a master trainer based in the United States to provide crucial support to two trainers-being-trained during the critical final stages of their rigorous program to become PCELTlicensed trainers. This marks an important milestone for the Kuwait program since, by preparing these trainers, Amideast, in partnership with the Kuwait Ministry of Education (MOE), will increase its capacity to train and certify future cohorts of government-school teachers across the country’s educational districts.

“This course changed my life, it gave me a new outlook on my career and what I can do to help teachers improve their teaching skills,” said Lulwa Bourisli, a veteran teacher with the MOE for the past 11 years, who is now a PCELT-licensed trainer.

The U.S.-accredited PCELT is a recognized TESOL certificate program developed by Amideast and the World Learning/SIT Graduate Institute. The 120-hour program provides a cutting-edge curriculum that blends international best practices with topics of particular relevance for teachers in the MENA region.

Since 2017, more than 50 Kuwaiti public-school teachers and supervisors have successfully earned their PCELT certification under a special program sponsored by the

Embassy of the United States. This latest training also received funding from the Boeing Company and Zain Group. Since Amideast introduced the PCELT program in 2012, over 900 teachers in the region, across ten MENA countries, have been trained and PCELT-certified.

This year, with six courses already funded and approved for Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine, we expect to pass the 1,000 mark in 2021 for this signature Amideast teacher development program.

The use of the Swivl robot is just one of the ways that Amideast has introduced innovative solutions in order to avoid interrupting training goals and to ensure that learning new skills remains possible during the pandemic. By the end of last summer, Amideast offices across the region had delivered hundreds of online English language courses for adults and young learners on its own customized platform. During the fall, Amideast courses were nearly all delivered online for public and corporate clients, as well as for a range of sponsored programs. Feedback to date indicates an increased recognition of the importance of e-learning — through various online and hybrid solutions — and Amideast, in response, is continuing to increase its capacity to plan and deliver a wide range of e-learning options for ongoing English language training.

AMIDEAST BECOMES A PMI AUTHORIZED TRAINING PARTNER Amideast is pleased to announce the continuation of our partnership with the Project Management Institute (PMI)® under the organization’s new Authorized Training Partner (ATP) program. Amideast will provide project management training to individuals and organizations in today’s evolving project economy as a certified PMI ATP program member. As a 17-year partner of the institute, we value our relationship with it and the programs, training materials, and services it provides to enhance competitiveness and to advance project management

knowledge and standards throughout the world. The new ATP program, by design, will enable us to reach a diverse clientele base in the MENA region. Individuals and organizations interested in learning more about the ATP program and the benefits of adopting project management standards should contact their local Amideast office.

The PMI Authorized Training Partner seal is a mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

impact

NEWSLETTER | SPRING 2021

BRINGING THE EL CLASSROOM TO WOMEN ACROSS YEMEN Amideast has launched AMAL@Amideast, an empowering new initiative that is bringing hope to women across Yemen. The fully online program, delivered by Amideast instructors in Aden with funding from the Yemen Affairs Unit’s Public Affairs Section, is reaching women living in many of Yemen’s 22 governorates, providing 390 contact hours of English language instruction over the coming year.

For these women, who had little or no prior knowledge of English, AMAL — which means “hope” in Arabic — is an apt name for a program that represents an opportunity to receive quality language instruction, of which they were only able to dream in the past, whether because of where they lived or societal restrictions on their ability to commute to or attend in-person classes. Not surprisingly, interest in the program was high. Nearly 700 women applied, with over 400 meeting basic eligibility criteria. Those with the most compelling reasons to study were selected for interviews, and 20 finalists and eight alternates were then chosen.

Finalists include women like Raghda Abdullah, a lawyer from the city of Taiz, who works with the Yemeni Women’s Union to defend battered women and street children. She sees greater opportunities for the women she serves by improving her English, as this would enable her to communicate directly with the international NGOs that fund so many projects in Yemen and apply for new grants to provide battered women with professional training and a safer environment.

TACKLING UNEMPLOYMENT (CONT’D. FROM P. 1) Emploi FBR was created to address Morocco’s stubborn unemployment situation, one that has hit its youth particularly hard. Despite the country’s recent achievements of robust economic growth, unemployment rates before the COVID-19 pandemic were already high. Morocco’s unemployment rate was estimated 9.2 percent in 2019 with the youth unemployment rate double that of the total population.

For university degree holders like Abdelmoula, the metrics were even more dismal, with three out of four unemployed.

Emploi FBR aims to help a total of 600 job candidates improve their employment prospects through soft skills training and by matching them to jobs. More than half of the slots are allocated to women, reflecting the high priority Emploi FBR places on improving the prospects of women jobseekers and helping Morocco raise its labor participation rate for women, which is among the lowest in the world and has been decreasing in recent years. An

The online format is achieving more than just language instruction. It is forging new networks and relationships among women living in places as diverse as Abyan, Al-Baida’a, Aden, Lahej, Taiz, Hadhramaut, Al-Mahra, AlHudaydah, and Al-Dhalea. “This scholarship has allowed me to get to know young women from different regions and cultures in our beloved Yemen,” trainee Sara Ali from Zinjibar, a city in Abyan Governorate, said. “It is a window of new hope for me.”

Despite the daily challenges they face because of ongoing conflict, fuel shortages, rolling blackouts, and at times unreliable Internet connections, the women recently completed their first session. Nisha Khaldoon, their teacher, is proud of having had the chance to educate this group of young women. “The trainees started the course with almost no experience using cloud applications, and their English was at a basic level. However, in the past seven weeks, they learned to use Zoom, Google Classroom, Google Forms, and Google Docs to improve their English, take tests, and complete their homework. Watching them progress so well has made me feel proud,” she said.

important goal of Emploi FBR is assisting private sector companies and organizations in meeting their hiring needs. The MCC data base shows that one out of three youths trained to date has found a job. However, that rate more likely exceeds 80 percent, says MCC Project Manager Mostafa Bentoumia, who explains that training and placement in the formal job sector is a requirement of MCC, but it takes time for candidates to be registered formally in the system and receive the local equivalent of social security.

“The point of the MCC program was to help me find a job,” observes Abdelmoula, adding “this training helped me present myself to others to make them believe in me.” The Casablanca youth was recently hired by the Ministry of Education to be a teacher-in-training of mathematics for middle school and high school students.

His confidence bolstered by the success of this initial step, he is setting his sights even higher: “I worked hard for this kind of opportunity. I now dream to teach at university one day.”