Monday, February 20, 2012

Week of 2/20 Events

Mon 2/20 (4pm) - C0nversation Hour & Quiz: President's Day

Tue 2/21 (4pm) - Conversation Hour: Mardi Gras in New Orleans

Wed 2/22 (5pm) - Reading for Kids

Come volunteer your time to pass your knowledge of English and love for reading down to the younger generation!

Thru 2/23 (3pm) - Guest Speaker: Tom Kral on "Teaching English Abroad"

Thomas Kral is the Acting Regional English Language Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis. Please find his bio below:

Thomas Kral is a retired member of the Senior Foreign Service. During a career of more than 30 years as a Foreign Service Officer, he served in Turkey, Afghanistan, Philippines, Thailand, Russia and Washington DC, primarily as a specialist in English language education. Following his retirement from the State Department, he was the first chief of the Office of Education for the US Agency for International Development in the Philippines. Currently, he is a consultant for English language teaching and management. He is a native of Chicago Illinois and holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Fri 2/24 (3pm) - Randa and Yosser's Cooking Club: Crepes!

Friday, February 10, 2012

Week of 2/13 Events

Mon 2/13 (4pm) - AC Volunteers Meeting

Tue 2/14 (4pm) - Valentine's Day Presentation and Valentine Making

Wed 2/15 (5pm) - Reading with Kids

Come volunteer your time to pass your knowledge of English and love for reading down to the younger generation!

Thur 2/16 (2pm) - Tunisian Debates presented by Jamil Choura

Fri 2/17 (4pm) - Moderator of the New Arab Debates, Tim Sebastian will speak about Debate and his project of New Arab Debates in Tunisia

Debate, as a concept, is meant to foster the culture of compromise and accepting the other, and it is an important component in the American and British academic cursus, where students debate in clubs and compete in national and international contests. Many debate programs appeared in the Arab World after the Revolution, and one of them is The New Arab Debates.
NAD was created in 2011 by veteran BBC journalist Tim Sebastian, the star of HARDTalk and founder of BBC Doha Debates. Sebastian served as the BBC correspondent in Eastern Europe, Moscow and Washington DC during the Cold War, and spent the last decade between London and the Middle East. He is also a writer (8 books), a several awards winner, and he interviewed most of the world's leaders during his long career, from Gorbachev to Clinton to Mandela and many others.

Come on Friday the 17th of February to listen to his adventures and learn more about The New Arab Debates!

Special Event

Fri 2/10 (3:30pm) - Manal Omar From the United States Institute of Peace on Women in Transition Societies

Bio:

Manal Omar joined USIP as a program officer for the grant program in August 2008. Currently, she serves as Director of Iraq, Iran, and North Africa Programs under the Center for Post-conflict Peace and Stability Operations. Previously, she was regional program manager for the Middle East for Oxfam - Great Britain, where she responded to humanitarian crises in Palestine and Lebanon. Omar has extensive experience in the Middle East. She worked with Women for Women International as regional coordinator for Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. Omar lived in Baghdad from 2003 to 2005 and set up operations in Iraq. She launched her career as a journalist in the Middle East in 1996. UNESCO recruited her to work on one of her first lead assignments in Iraq in 1997-1998. Omar worked more than three years with the World Bank’s development economics group. She has carried out training programs in Yemen, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Kenya and many other countries.
Omar’s activities have been profiled by the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, NPR, Glamour, the London Times and Newsweek. Her articles and opinion pieces have appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Azizah Magazine and Islamica Magazine.
Omar is on the board of directors of Women Without Borders, an international NGO based in Austria and an active member of the American Muslim community. In 2007, Islamic Magazine named her one of the ten young visionaries shaping Islam in America. She holds an M.A. in Arab studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. in international relations from George Mason University.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Week of 2/6 Events

Mon 2/6 (4pm) - Soliya Connect Program Orientation

Tue 2/7 (4pm) - Presentation on African-American History Month

Wed 2/8 (4pm) - Disucssion Hour: "Obama's World"

Thur 2/9 (2pm) - "Barack Obama and the Paradox of Race in the United States"

This event will be held at the U.S. embassy so, if you wish to come, you must submit your name to the American Corner Coordinator.

Fri 2/10 (3pm) - American Corner Volunteers All Group Meeting and Presentations!

Stay tuned for more information about this meeting.