In her video accepting the visionary award of YouTube (November 2008), Queen Rania spoofed David Letterman with 10 reasons of why she launched her channel against stereotypes on YouTube, 9 of those reasons are funny ones and one of the 9 is: “Because I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player…”.

Three weeks in USA, I always make my way down to the lobby from the 18th floor. In that long journey everyday I meet new people, being in a hotel will tell them that I’m at least from another state if not from another country; that what makes the question: “Where are you from?” something that I used to hear all day long.

Honestly, very few people who knew Jordan; a lot of them used to ask “Where is Jordan?” or “is it next to Israel?” but it was very shocking when someone asked me “What’s Jordan?”, that question made me answer in a very ironic way “Jordan is a basketball player”. Suddenly that man jumped and told me “oh sorry sorry… Jordan! Do you still speak Russian?” I was like “but we never spoke Russian, Jordan is in the Arab world… it’s not Georgia”. Couple of minutes the elevator stopped at the lobby and that man was explaining how much he’s sorry for not recognizing my country because it’s still very early and he’s unable to concentrate.

It didn’t take me too long to understand the reason behind their ignorance. It’s definitely not our media because we have a King and a Queen who are doing a great job in promoting Jordan, also our location in the middle of the conflicts should make us very popular. But what if those people grab the newspaper everyday in the morning to read some weird news? I couldn’t find anything that mentions the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in the daily newspaper in front of my room door and that was fine for me, but the fact that the main headline on the first page in the “US Today” newspaper was “Sandra Bullock’s new adopted son” drove me crazy, at that moment I though that the peace has spread all over the world, the conflict in Palestine has been resolved, Iraqi war is over and Haiti has been already rebuilt.

That’s insane! why would a country like USA that’s causing problems all over the world hide a lot of information about the people in the other side of the globe?

عشان بدي اكتب هاد العنوان قررت إنو رح اكتب بالعربي هل مرة. وصلت على أميركا قبل اسبوعين و بلشت من العاصمه واشنطن و بعدين على هيوستن، طبعاً هدول مدينتين معروفين. بعدين اكتشفت اني رايح على مدينه اسمها سينت لويس بحياتي ما سمعت فيها و بس وصلت هناك عرفت ليش عمري مش سامع عنها.

سينت لويس مدينه ما فيها الفشخرة تبعت باقي المدن إلي بعرفها أو شفتها، يعني ببساطة الجماعة مفلسين و عباب الله. لفيت كتير و زرت مدارس، جامعات و شركات و بآخر يوم رحت أقابل مجموعة مجتمعين بدهم يطوعو بحديقة عامه عشان ينظفوها و يصلحو شوية شغلات بس إلي فاجأني إنو مش هاد الهدف الأساسي للاجتماع، هدول مجموعة مسلمين، مسحيين و يهود بجمعية لحوار الأديان. طبعاً الموضوع بالنسبه إلي كان كتير غريب خصوصاً بعد ما قالولي إنو بهاي المدينه كان المسلم أو اليهودي ما بطلعلهم يتعالجوا بمستشفى مسيحي (يا فرحتهم)، يعني يموتو الله لا يردهم.

طبعاً أنا ما بلومهم بالمرة إذا هيك الوضع لازم يلاقولهم حل و يجتمعو هيك إجتماع، بس مش هاد الموضوع؛ الموضوع إنو أنا قلتلهم جمله وحده “يا جماعة أنا مستغرب كيف إنتو المفروض تكونو أقوى دوله بالعالم و مش عارفين تخلصوا من هاي التفاهات، و نحنا إلي انتو معتبرين إنا عالم ثالث أو عاشر منستحي على دمنا ومنحترم غيرنا”، هاي الجمله متل إلي كانو مش مصدقين و واحد يحكيها. وحده منهم قالتلي إنت مجنون إذا مفكر هيك، هاد الحكي عندكم مش عنا… إذا هاي الحديقة إلي إنت فيها بموت فيها ٢-٣ بالأسبوع طخ! و نحنا مش لاقيين ناكل ولا نشرب بس شاطرين يسحبوا منا الضريبه ويعيشوا الجيش إلي خارب بيتكم.

المهم كلهم بلشو يتشكونو و وحده منهم اعترفت إنو عشان ابنها ياكل بعد ما مات جوزها طخ بالحديقة إلي كنا فيها، هي ببساطة مهنتها الدعارة في أقوى دوله إلي عم بحكي عنها والي ما عرفت ادرسها ببلاش.

و الباقي عندكم…

As  co-founder of Nakhweh.com I arrived to the United States on the 9th of April to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program by the Department of the State under the title of “Volunteerism: United We Serve” with 104 people from more than 80 different countries. It’s my first visit to the USA; in general I like the country and the way it’s organized, also the people are very kind and friendly (I didn’t expect it though) but for sure it’s not the right place for me to live in.

The program started on the 12th of April in Washington D.C. with a very intensive agenda that includes a lot of seminars, panels and activities, then it moved to Houston and now I’m in Saint Louis for a couple of days before the program concludes in San Fransisco. The purpose of such a program is to show us how volunteerism is done in USA and how we can reflect it on our communities, taking into consideration that they have the best practices. Unfortunately, until this morning, the last 10 days added nothing to me in regards of social innovation as I really see the high potential for Jordan to host such a program rather than USA especially when it comes to 3 important topics:

• One of the panelists said that they really face a problem in getting people who need help to do their part of social service in USA; at that point I had nothing to do more than mentioning Madrasati as a clear example of what is being done in Jordan and how students help in moving their schools to another level.
• The staff of a very big international oil and gas company were very proud of what they are doing as a part of their social service programs and CSR and I was literally shocked! If that what they consider CSR then I had to raise the name of Aramex and show how they at least built a community center in one of our areas as an example of what is being done in my country. They were shocked that we do something like that (and thought Aramex is my father’s company and I’m promoting it).
• On another panel there was a CEO of a volunteer matching organization which has a website that does Nakhweh.com’s work but on a bigger scale. That guy failed in giving me clear answers on my questions about the main three problems that face such a project.

In Saint Louis this morning I and my new Polish friend Wojciech Rustecki went to the Parkway North High School to take a look on how youth are engaged in social service and volunteerism. Our host at the school was a girl who takes care of the visitors like us as she volunteers with the World Affairs Council of Saint Louis. The meeting started with 3 students from the school (Muslim, Christian and Jewish) and finally those guys succeeded in impressing me for the first time since I arrived to their country.

One of the classes at Parkway North High School

We started to ask the questions that we used to ask when we meet other people who deal with youth and students but never had the chance to ask the youth themselves. The first and the most important one is: Why are you involved? a question that I personally could never find its answer although I’ve been asked more than once about it (I can’t forget when Fadi Ghandour insisted to dig and get it out of me with no hope).

Simply we figured out that the high schools in USA require 10 hours of volunteerism or what they call “service learning” and that’s how students are forced to do their social homework but what impressed me more is how those students continued their involvement in social services also after finishing their 10 hours. It didn’t stop their; those kids also work with their colleagues and prepare other volunteering activities for them.

All of them shared with us their passion and how they are happy to feel that they are making a difference in their communities. I believe that everyone on earth will have the same feeling if they get the chance to try it for one time at least, it’s all about the first experience and everything comes next.

Going back to Jordan, how hard is it to copy that concept to our schools? Not only schools, we recently started to hear something about few majors in the universities that require the students to complete a number of community service hours, why not all of them? I can predict the answer; when it comes to policies, things always take forever and that’s not a reason that convinces me at all.

If that’s not going to happen anytime soon, and soon for me means very very soon; then we, at Nakhweh, are moving forward and taking that step ahead in helping students to give back to their communities. This is how we will truly help in building a better understanding of the volunteering culture in Jordan and the Arab world. It’s a matter of days and I will be back to Jordan; as soon as I arrive we will prepare a series of very casual seminars to be held in schools and universities to let the students know how to do that homework.

Ron Dermer, one of the advisors of Netanyahu’s campaign has another opinion about the common quotes “We don’t imitate… we inovate”. As it’s very obviuos that Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli candidate for the prime minister) has cloned Obama’s website.

Taking a look on both homepages (use the Russian version for Netanyahu’s one to see it from left to right direction), you will figure out that both are really very close:

Dermer said: “We’re all in the same business, so we took a close look at a guy who has been the most successful and tried to learn from him. And while we will not use the word ‘change’ in the same way in our campaign, we believe Netanyahu is the real candidate of change for Israel.” he added, “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”

On a different note about the web role in the politics, I think that the president-elect of the USA has used the internet to do a huge marketing for his campaign. Barak Obama’s team was every where and still there on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace. The online campaign also built a consensual database of 3 million mobile numbers by promising that in return, supporters would get campaign news before the media.

The web has helped to inspire and empower a generation that has rejected political apathy. Obama’s team used technology to make issues personal and relevant by giving people ownership of the campaign. It wasn’t a complicated strategy, the campaign accounted for half of all online political advertising this year at $8,000,000. A fact that won’t have escaped Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt, who is reportedly on the shortlist for a chief technical role in Obama’s administration.