In early February, one of our team leaders started working with the ISNAD Community Center in Palestine to set up a “language buddy” program on Zoom between students at our university, Sciences Po Paris Campus de Menton, and students at ISNAD. Raed Eshnaiwer, professor at Birzeit University and the center’s founder, described his eagerness to set up an intercultural connection exchange for Palestinian students, as many of them had never left the city where they had spent their entire lives. He suggested developing language tutoring programs, and also arranging monthly conferences with debates and discussions between Sciences Po and ISNAD CC students.

We will be connecting one student at Sciences Po Menton, most of whom learn Arabic as part of the curriculum, with a Palestinian student. Each pair 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. We are also planning to set up 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 soon.

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 note down interests and linguistic abilities to create the best pairs possible. We are also working on promoting our project to involve more students in the virtual language exchange, and working with the university administration to register our first open-to-all event. We are also looking to form a partnership between MEDMUN (our campus' annual Model UN Conference and the biggest Moden UN in the Mediterranean region), to give interested students the opportunity to gain valuable experience in the fields of diplomacy and international relations.