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Portland to Palestine: A Student-to-Student Project Evokes Empathy and Curiosity
When asked to synthesize 16 weeks of study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, covering dozens of readings, films, role plays, guest speakers, and discussions, the high school students in my Middle East Studies class at Trillium Charter School in Portland, Ore., quickly organized a nine-point list of the most important topics and activities. All but one were related to the Mercy Corps’ Why Not program, an internet-based exchange run by the international humanitarian relief organization (also based in Portland). My students’ real-time interactions with their counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza made real the suffering and daily lives of people their own age living in conflict, and challenged them to consider the responsibilities of global citizenry.
Why Not, now part of Mercy Corps’ partner organization Global Citizen Corps, began as an informal email exchange program between students in northern Iraq and Taiwan in 2003, facilitated by Mercy Corps, and has grown to encompass over 600 youth in the United States, United Kingdom, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories, corresponding through two-way blog and live video conferences. The “Why Not” label was coined by a group of students organizing a Mercy Corps-supported community newsletter in Beirut in 2005. Plagued by pessimism about the potential impact of their efforts, some were suggesting that they should abandon the project altogether, when one eager, hopeful participant blurted out, “Lesh la?”—Arabic for “Why not?” The words became the name of the group’s newsletter and later of the Mercy Corps program itself.
