MEPI Students Demonstrate Early Initiative

MEPI Georgtwoners-by Saad Charif

by The Third Eye

After several students were accepted from different countries in the Middle East to study in the United States in a program that is sponsored by The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the participants have been divided into different groups. Each group will go to one of the universities in the United States partnering with MEPI for six weeks. One of those groups will go to Georgetown University. At Georgetown University, they will attend lecture series, readings, and discussions that are combined with visits to different places in the United States to develop their leadership skills.

Saad Charif, who is one of the participants from Morocco, has created a group on Facebook for those who are going to go to Georgetown University. The group now has sixteen members. Every day, the members of the group communicate with each other and try to learn more about each other. Moreover, the members have already begun to discuss the goals of the program. One of the goals of the program is about cultural exchanges, so the members of the group are talking about their culture and customs each day very enthusiastically.

In a quick chat that I had with Charif, he stated the following about how he came up with the idea of creating such a group.

I just felt like it's the right thing to do since we are all going to be together abroad. I came up with the idea first when I was selected, and I asked the person who interviewed us if it's possible for me to get other members from Morocco's emails. Then I created the Facebook page which has details about the program. The first non-Moroccan on the page was Fadi, and we decided that we go for both a group and a page, making ourselves administrators of both, so now I feel like a family's godfather [lol], joking. ;). I feel like I had a dream of gathering everybody together in one place before going there, and the dream came true. I brought two groups together in one page because I wanted to make sure that once we arrived in America, we wouldn’t say: who the hell is this guy, but instead say: oh, that's my friend.

It is worth noting that Peshawa Ahmed  Mahmud, a Business Administration Major Sophomore, and Mahdi Abdullah Murad, an Engineering Major Freshman, are the two AUI-S students out of five Iraqi students who are nominated to participate in this program for this year.