We started our project in early February, when one of our members started communicating with the ISNAD Community Center on potentially establishing a pen-pal type relationship (but through Zoom) with students taking language classes in their Palestinian center. Raed Eshnaiwer, the center’s founder and professor at Birzeit University, outlined the need for intercultural connections for Palestinian students, given the fact that many of them never leave the boundaries of their own city. He suggested that not only do we start planning for language tutoring, but also plan for monthly conferences on debates and discussions between Sciences Po and ISNAD CC students.

Currently, we have finished the first stage of recruiting students interested in the project and are waiting for professor Raed Eshnaiwer to provide us with a student list. We are working with Sciences Po students to solidify interests and linguistic abilities, in order to better pair them with their Palestinian counterparts. We are also promoting our project in order to involve more students in the virtual language exchange and cooperating with the university administration to register our first open-to-all event.

We will be setting up 1-1 meetings between one student at Sciences Po, most of whom learn Arabic as part of the curriculum, with one Palestinian student. They will hold weekly virtual meetings in order to create networks and practice their language skills with each other. While most Sciences Po students will be helping their Palestinian counterparts with English conversational skills, in some cases, and according to demand, students will also have the opportunity to improve their French, Spanish, Turkish, German, Japanese, Russian, Persian, Kurdish, and more. In addition, we will hold cultural events such as debates and panels. We have not been able to hold one yet, but we plan to have a discussion on a topic such as the right to education within the next three weeks.

On the note of conferences, we are also working with the MUN team on campus, MEDMUN, which holds a six-language conference, to set up an intro to the UN and diplomacy course prepping students interested in politics and international relations to attend an online MUN module which we would create for them.
As part of this two-part exchange process, what is required from my role is twofold:
I will serve as a“ language buddy” or tutor, engaging with my Palestinian counterpart through weekly Zoom meetings. I will find discussion topics and prepare my language abilities for each session. I can choose (depending on my relationship with my Zoom penpal) whether I want to do an exchange in my own target language (which, for me, is Arabic) or whether I simply focus on discussing common interest topics in English in order to better allow my counterpart to learn English. For example, Raed's daughter and many of her friends are learning Turkish. As a Turk, not only does this make me really excited to share my culture but also allows me to share my linguistic skills in a language much less spoken and sought than English.
I will serve as a communicator and conference organizer, regularly meeting with my project colleagues to brainstorm conference topics as well as the format of how it should be held; such as how many people should attend, how many questions should be asked, or how free or strict the discussion framework should be.