Overview

Bridge to the World is Project Hope’s newest program, which combines English and French classes with computer education focusing on communication through the Internet. Bridge to the World students use their new language skills to create a ‘Blog’ as a way to connect to people living in other countries. These blogs, written either in English or French, introduce the students to their readers and give them a chance to write about subjects that they care about. They are also given the chance to practice photography skills and put their own pictures on their Blogs. Students from other countries read the Palestinian students’ Blogs and respond to them. In this way a lasting connection is made and an important dialogue is created.

Goals

The goal of Bridge to the World is to provide Palestinian children and youth with psychological support, skills training and a chance to communicate with their peers in other countries. The last cannot be understressed because of the central role it takes within this program as a means to address the children's needs and their personal development. It is a way for them to reach out and connect with people around the world, despite a suffocating network of physical and political barriers being put up around them and the people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt).

Bridge to the World takes an expanded English and French program to a new level by creating links for Palestinian children with foreigners, which will go beyond the limited number of international volunteers we can invite to join our program in the West Bank. Under this program several hundred young Palestinians are taught each year how to create their own Blogs where they can document their daily lives, write stories and share their experiences online. They are given access to digital cameras to take pictures to upload onto the Blogs. They are taught how to use email and invited into E-pal exchanges with people in other countries.

Bridge to the World is specifically designed to draw on children’s resilience and encourage them with a positive outlook for the future. Combining exercises that activate children’s imaginations with international volunteers physically and emotionally uninvolved in the conflict, children will be given a break in the daily routine of their discouraging environment; a respite that helps them deal with their own personal trauma. It is impossible in current circumstances to approach healing this trauma, because the conditions causing it are ongoing. However, it is possible to provide them with new ways of coping.

ESL and FSL

Education in man-made emergency situations can be life saving and life sustaining. For children and adolescents, it sustains life by offering structure, stability and hope for the future. Education in emergencies also helps to heal the pain of bad experiences, build skills, and support conflict resolution and peace-building. English and French provide children and youth with a fresh vocabulary with which to express themselves, and indirectly offers them new perspectives on life. Mastering another language instills a new sense of confidence that inevitably carries over into their daily life, empowering them in an environment that leaves them feeling constantly disempowered. English meanwhile is of vital importance in the Arab world due to a high demand for fluency in the workforce. This need is compounded by the extremely high rate of unemployment in the oPt. French is also useful due to the number of French organizations operating in the oPt.

International volunteers bring life to the language for children, providing them with practical experience in communicating with a foreigner, showing how useful and important learning the language is. All activities incorporate aspects of open forum discussion carried out in an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance. Such activities are meant to facilitate public speaking as well as the exchange of ideas.

Online Component

The online component is the most dynamic aspect which really makes this program stand out. It will create a means by which young Palestinians can transcend physical and political barriers put up around them in order to reach out and communicate directly with their peers in the outside world. This combined with the international volunteers traveling to Nablus will create a real bridge to the world.

Children and youth selected from the ESL and FSL classes will be taught how to create and maintain their own Blogs, where they can write and take pictures in order to share their thoughts and experiences with the outside world. Newfound English and French skills will allow them to communicate via this new modicum and to engage in E-pal exchanges set up with other children and youth in other countries.

Furthermore, a number of pupils will be be exposed to and learn how to use digital media editing tools that are a valuable sophisticated set of technical skills. Combined with the confidence and proficiency to use these tools, they can develop the skills to the point of applying them to future employment, such as: generating more advanced kinds of publicity material, updating web pages, understanding scanning, pixels, file formats, superimposition, layering and collaging media together with illustrations.

Dialogue

Communication enables dialogue. English is the language of the world. Learning English opens up access to the world, its resources and people of different cultures. A young Palestinian's first-hand experience with a foreigner usually consists of a hostile soldier, but through Bridge to the World they can have a different type of experience with foreigners. Though French has a smaller following it is still an important global language. Learning English and French is therefore not only a valuable skill for personal development but also as a medium to establish dialogue, which leads to understanding and peace-building.

The entire program is imbued with an international component meant to further these goals. Children will interact daily with a teacher from another country. Youth will be introduced to children from other countries via the Internet. Unique facts about other cultures will enrich their learning experience. Contemporary issues will be discussed and debated at the appropriate skill level, sometimes drawing upon topics from our existing “Social Justice and Human Rights” workshops program.

To see the students’ blogs: click here