AMIDEAST, with a grant from the GE Foundation, offered English language training scholarships to 180 dedicated Palestinian teachers headed to AMIDEAST’s centers in El-Bireh/Ramallah, Gaza City, Hebron, and Nablus for a special training program designed to make them more effective teachers of English. Drawn from undeserved schools in the West Bank and Gaza supported by UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Education, these teachers were eager to improve their command of the English language in order to better model the language for their students as they learn to speak, understand, and write correct English. Funded by the General Electric Company’s philanthropic arm, the GE Foundation, the summer program involved 90 hours of in-class instruction in general English teaching skills, conversation, and writing, as well as practical, everyday English and workshops to upgrade participants’ written communication skills. 

Boeing Mobile Resource Unit Program: Reading Road Trip

 Three mobile libraries, purchased with a grant from the Boeing Foundation, started their journey around the West Bank on November 1, 2010. Nine participating schools will each host the library for a period of ten weeks, competing for the right to take full possession of one of the libraries at the end of the project. The project focuses on improving the quality of English language reading experiences for students in grades 4 – 6, and participating teachers have been trained on the use of generic reading response activities to monitor the reading activity of students using the libraries. Prizes will be given to the student in each school who reads the most books, as assessed by the completion of the most response activities, and to classes who read more than 150 books.

 Fifty-One Palestinian Students Receive First-Ever

American-Palestinian Local University Scholarships

COHORT 2002 

Abdelkareem, Hasan	Ph.D.	Education	Michigan State University
Abu Hammad, Ahmed	Ph.D.	Soil and Water Science	Agricultural University of Norway
Harbid, Akram	Master's	Arabic/English Translation and Interpreting

Alumni News

In October 2010, the IFPAA selected new members (Erab Fuqah, Mamoun AbuRayyan, Heila Tabakhna, Abdelnasser Khawarasha, Nezar AlAtwaneh) to lead the executive committee for the next year.

Alumni Activities

In 2010, the IFP Alumni Associations in the West Bank and Gaza received grants for capacity building and networking activities. Activities proposed included an IFP alumni conference, community outreach visits, alumni networking, and alumni publications.

IFPAA-Palestine Conference (March 2010)

On March 27, 2010, the Palestine Chapter of the International Fellowships Program Alumni Association (IFPAA) organized a conference simultaneously held in the West Bank and Gaza. The conference under the title: “Together for a Better Future: Strategies for Achieving Social Justice” was organized by the IFPAA, AMIDEAST, and the Palestinian Academic Council (West Bank).  The conference presented selected research papers by Palestinian and international scholars focusing on issues of social change and social justice in a wide range of areas, including education, health, environment, children’s and women’s issues, poverty, politics and law.

• "Together for a Better Future - Strategies for Achieving Social Justice” Publication

The program will teach English to Palestinian youth served by the Youth Development Resource Centers (YDRCs) in Hebron, Nablus, and Ramallah/El-Bireh. AMIDEAST will upgrade the English language proficiency of an estimated 900 youth by the conclusion of this 11-month program, including high school students, college students, students about to enter the workforce, and working youth. AMIDEAST proposes to not only train Palestinian youth served by the YDRCs, but also to build capacity within the YDRC network and the Palestinian community as a whole to deliver English training by providing fresh graduates from English Language programs at Palestinian universities with training in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), who will then teach English at the YDRCs.

Employment Opportunities

AMIDEAST, an international non-profit organization in the West Bank and Gaza, is implementing an English Language Training program through a subgrant from EDC –Ruwwad Youth Empowerment Program funded by the Unite