We started our project in early February, when one of our members started communicating with the ISNAD Community Center in Palestine on potentially establishing a “language buddy” relationship via Zoom between students at Sciences Po Menton and those at the community 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 arrange monthly conferences on debates and discussions between Sciences Po and ISNAD CC students.

We will be setting up one student at Sciences Po, most of whom learn Arabic as part of the curriculum, with a 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 the 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.

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 SciencesPo 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.