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.

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