Success Stories

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 PCELT-licensed 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.

Abdallah is the son of Amideast’s longtime Gaza Field Operations Manager, Anees Abu Hashem and his wife Somaya. He is a master’s degree candidate at Stanford where his younger brother Yousef is a freshman. His two older brothers, Obaidah and Abderhman, graduated from MIT and Harvard. The former is a team leader at Apple, while the latter is working for a medical degree from Cornell-Weill Medical School and a Ph.D. in medical research from Rockefeller Brothers University.

EGYPT

Our many years of experience proved invaluable when COVID-19 began spreading in communities and on university campuses across the United States, requiring our staff to shift gears quickly to meet an unprecedented challenge: how to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of international students in the face of a global pandemic. Our roster of students in the United States included some 300 Fulbrighters in graduate studies, 149 undergraduates in the Hope Fund and DKSSF programs, and 199 high school students in the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program.

As the students scattered from their universities to their homes across all 27 governorates of Egypt, university courses moved online and Amideast adjusted to providing student support services remotely and virtual training and activities. Within one week of the closing of universities throughout Egypt, Amideast moved English classes from an in-person format to a synchronous virtual format, working with teachers to adjust curricula and their pedagogical approaches, while continually improving the program by including asynchronous content.

The 30 students, who belong to the USAID-funded HEI Public University Scholarships program, were able to experience the American academic approach and values. They took on team-based projects with their American colleagues — competing to draw up the best business plan in their entrepreneurship course — that developed their leadership and collaboration skills.

The students included 38 Egyptian undergraduates in the HEI Public University Scholarships program, whose travel home was impacted in particular by a lack of international flights. With the help of the Egyptian embassy in Washington, DC, which facilitated arrangements with EgyptAir. They travelled in May in three groups on chartered flights to Egypt and were placed in a mandatory 14-day quarantine in Marsa Alam before returning home.

As the COVID-19 crisis became a global pandemic, a former teacher and an alumnus of Amideast/Yemen have swung into action on the medical frontlines. Benjamin Cooper, who taught with Amideast/Yemen in 2013-14 before returning to the United States to pursue a career in nursing, has been working in an ICU dedicated to COVID patients. Recently, combining his teaching skills with firsthand experience on the frontlines, he was a guest speaker in Amideast/Yemen’s first fully online course.

On this International Women’s Day, we are celebrating the accomplishments of women in the countries in which we work. Here is a sampling of stories of hope and change from each country: