Technology as a common language

Like everyone else I know, I have a cousin in Israel. He is 14 years old, cute, clever and told me that his favourite subject at school is Arabic.

“Have you ever met an Arab kid your age?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Would you ever like to meet an Arab kid your age?”
At this point he started looking at me suspiciously and promptly changed the subject.

Israeli and Palestinian MEET students

The truth is many Jewish Israeli kids seldom get a chance to meet Arab kids, let alone Palestinians, many of whom live a few minutes away. In fact, like my cousin, many are afraid to.

An exceptional programme in Jerusalem has succeeded in transcending this fear by creating a bridge between these two societies. Brilliantly, it uses technology as a common language. The programme is called MEET (Middle East Education through Technology), and it brings together Palestinian and Israeli high school students to learn computing and business skills. This is certainly no ‘airyfairy’ programme though. Rigorous and competitive, the programme accepts only 44 students of the several hundred Grade 9 learners who apply for a spot. It is for talented and motivated individuals who will likely be future leaders in their fields.

After making it through rigorous testing, students commit to three years — for a few weeks during the summer holidays and then weekly meetings throughout the school year. The students come away with a ‘mini MBA’, having been taught by professors and graduates of MIT. The training takes place on the Hebrew University campus in computer labs allocated specifically for the programme. The price per participant is about $15K for three years of programming (>500 academic hours per year), all of which is funded by donors. For the students, the program is entirely free.

A different kind of social networking
MEET participants learn by doing. Through the various projects they complete, they learn business and leadership skills as well as Java programming. Perhaps most importantly though, they learn to talk to each other. And through learning to talk, they are able to broach those otherwise divisive issues that most adults don’t even know how to begin to discuss.

In meeting some of the participants, I discussed the value of the programme with them. In just a few weeks they had learned skills that many universities teach over the course of a year. They were working on sophisticated programming projects for real clients, including HP, Google, and G.ho.st. These were intelligent, computersavvy kids who confidently spoke about social marketing, user interface design and Amazon Cloud services as easily as they spoke about their personal lives. And yet, when asked about the most valuable thing they are learning, the answer was resoundingly the same. They would look at each other with shy smiles and tell me: “Learning that ‘the other’ is the same as me.” Each of them seemed to be amazed to discover how alike they were. They listened to the same music, watched the same films, programmed in the same language and had the same hopes and fears. And through the intense training, this realization only deepened.

Joining together in Java
The participants come from Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, as well as the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, and the Israeli towns of Beit Shemesh and Mevaseret Zion. In some of their communities they are challenged for taking part in such a programme. One religious Jewish girl told how at first she had kept her participation secret, but now, she has begun to talk about it openly and already some of her peers are interested.

Likewise, many of the Palestinian students are shunned for participating in what have been coined ‘normalisation’ projects. Said one student, “The situation is not normal, and I can understand why people in my community do not want me to advertise a programme that makes it appear that everyone gets on with each other.” But for this student, the product that MEET offered him was just too valuable to turn down.

It should come as no surprise that MEET is quickly becoming a brand name, and with some of the graduates’ acceptances into top universities and prestigious army units, it is becoming even more attractive to just about anyone looking to get ahead. Whether the student sees the value of MEET in the skills they learn or in the interactions they have, the programme clearly offers talented young people something that is both relevant and worthwhile.

Perhaps next year my Israeli cousin will enroll, and for the first time meet a Palestinian peer with whom he can practice his Arabic — all while learning Java.

Daniella Jaff Klein qualified as an attorney at one of South Africa’s leading law firms. She worked for the New Israel Fund in the UK before moving to Israel. Through volunteering with innovative organisations who are finding solutions for a way forward in harsh circumstances, she was inspired to write a blog, Flowers in the Desert, to publicise and showcase some of their work. Visit Flowers in the Desert: http://flowersindesert.wordpress.com