In about 20 months of conflict, Syria’s infrastructure has sustained massive damage. Damage has not been limited to essential services in urban areas, but has also caused significant compromise of transportation infrastructure (roads and highways, railways), the energy infrastructure (electrical power network, natural gas pipelines, petroleum pipelines) and the Communications infrastructure.
The Syrian conflict will come eventually to an end. The challenging and long process of building will begin in earnest. The first, and most important step to rebuilding essential services and the nation’s infrastructure is an accurate and current understanding of those essential services and infrastructure on a geographically precise basis. And that is exactly the goal of the project TESiS, that I am currently working on. TESiS, is a dedicated website for gathering, mapping, sorting and updating information about the state of the essential services and infrastructure in Syria. The website is based on the well- established “Ushahidi” platform, an open source software that provides possibility of crowd-sourcing the task of information collection, visualization and interactive mapping of this data.

TESiS major goals can be summarized in the following points:

• Create a highly scalable platform for the gathering of information on essential services, and infrastructure in Syria.
• Engage the Syrian public in a collective effort to report on the state of essential services and infrastructure via the web interface, SMS, email or twitter
• Help remote areas to get more visibility
• Providing stream media with an additional source of information
• Collect, sort and map data; and present it in an accessible manner
• Provide government departments, international agencies and bodies, and NGOs with a better overview on the current state of the essential services and infrastructure in Syria
• Track the rebuilding efforts by mapping improvements in the state of infrastructure and essential services

Spring Flowers is a project for identifying and promoting gifted students of Ethiopian origin.

Education is the key to self-belief. Self-belief is the key to leadership. Leadership is the key to reducing social inequality and to making changes that will advance society. With this premise, “Spring Flowers” was founded.

The overall goal of the project is to find and nurture gifted students among the Ethiopian community through an adapted identification process and to train them for leadership, so that they could hold positions of leadership in the future and break the cycle of being immigrants in Israel, thus reducing social inequality.

The idea is to promote the most talented among them, but with the understanding that standardized tests for identifying gifted students failed to reflect their true capabilities because of language barriers. With the help of one of the most prestigious institutes for promoting giftedness in Israel, we designed a test tailored to students of Ethiopian origin. After the identification, we organized weekly meetings on mathematics, analytical thinking, language skills, astronomy, leadership, and experiential and creative learning.

The project was adopted by the city of Netanya and expanded to three schools. The project won the “Recanati” Award for Creativity in Education in 2004

The goal of Agam’s project is to prove that Arab-Israeli cooperation in the Hi-Tech domain is possible, profitable and a good foundation for relationship-building.
Worldwide, the Hi-Tech industry is an engine of economic progress. Due to the Arab-Israeli conflict there is a troubling disconnect between the growing Arab Hi-Tech community and the already prominent Israeli Hi-Tech hub.
The Arab world’s Hi-Tech sector has encountered obstacles similar to those of other regions. The Israeli Hi-Tech world, coming second only to Silicon Valley, has been running into a glass ceiling as it is too small to feed its industry and its supply of engineers is running short.
Such cooperation between Arabs and Israelis can be executed on several levels:
• _Young entrepreneurs should work jointly with co-founders “from the other side”.
• _Medium sized companies could shift relevant operations to near-shore sub-contractors
• _Large scale companies could outsource their efforts to workers who live in the same time zone as theirs but have a different specialty.

Languages can bring people together, because acquiring a new language is acquiring a new soul.
The literacy rate in Tunisia is about 80%, not bad, but not enough. The NASH initiative started 2 years ago from a very small movement to afford people safe water, food and clothes. Now one of its goals is to teach the 20% of illiterate people in Tunisia.
Along with the Goethe Institute and Tunis Business School it is working on improving the relations that exist between Tunisia and the other countries by introducing foreign companies and investors to the Tunisian market whether by commercial studies, translation or business offers. We are currently working on adding specific courses to be taught at some Tunisian institutions such as International Affairs, Communication and Dialogue Skills and especially Foreign Languages.
Arabic and French are the two dominant languages that are used in Tunisia which does not represent a good motivation for people to learn English or any other language. That’s why this initiative has now 28 volunteer teachers who give courses of Modern Standard Arabic for elderly illiterate people, and teaches 7 foreign languages (Tamazight, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew and Mandarin) for students with disabilities as well as for any other person with the desire to learn a new language.
Through the NASH initiative we were also able to conduct research together with the ministry of culture, and the BIML, University of El-Manar Tunis, about the minority ethnicities, religions and languages that exist in Tunisia and organize open debates that explain the role of diversity in political participation, social and cultural attitudes.

Contemporary and classical, most Iraqi poetry has yet to reach English. This year, I’m developing contacts within contemporary Iraqi Kurdish poetry circles, translating and bringing established poets like Abdulla Pashew and Sherko Bekas to the University. Poetry readings in the immediate region are small at a hundred attendees and readers treat the writers more like rockstars in tweed than like bygone relics of academia. These poets’ classical counterparts, rather than being the stuffy gentlemen we might imagine, push the boundaries of what language can do.

Their voices, under-served by existing scholarship, broaden perceptions of a region that is not singular. It is easy, and false, to speak in stereotypical short-hand: “Islam says,” “Muslims believe,” “Kurds are,” “Turks never…” Idiosyncrasies are inconvenient. They invite others to consider the humanity, the individuality, of a situation. These poets are sensationally idiosyncratic. Writing today, writing hundreds of years ago, they manifest an Islam, an Iraqi identity, that bucks stereotype and excites further study.

In “My Honesty,” Jamil Al-Zahawi declares, that he is not “for those who give great/Favor to men and not women//But the earth revolved until/This one and those became confused.” Translating and presenting these poems is one important step toward undoing the confusion, opening the door for clarity.

To move classical Iraqi poems into English requires a team of individuals versed in modern and classical Arabic, several dialects of Kurdish, Turkish, and Persian. Across ethnic tension lines, these poems bring together young intellectuals in service of creation.

Everyone has dreams, and everyone can make dreams come true; this is the premise that sparked the idea of The Dream Matcher. The Dream Matcher builds online and offline platforms that help people make their dreams come true.

Unlike many similar initiatives, The Dream Matcher is for everyone. Similar initiatives target the needy or the sick, what about everyone else? They also have dreams and need help making them some true. Dreams are for everyone!
Tens of dreams have been realized through www.thedreammatcher.com and through the live events, The Dream Matcher Experience. Some dreams include meeting local celebrities, trying extreme sports, learning languages, practicing musical instruments, and even, finding jogging partners. Some of those stories are published on The Dream Matcher’s Blog
Our next goals are to spread The Dream Matcher Experience around the world, and to adapt it for a corporate setting to be used as a bonding activity between members of large corporations.

For more information, visit thedreammatcher.com

Kuwait Dive Team, “Guardians of the Sea”, was founded in 1986 by young Kuwaiti volunteers who took it upon themselves to protect Kuwait’s marine environment. The team’s work is inspired by our vision to actively participate in the creation of environmental awareness and the promotion of Kuwait’s voluntary spirit. The team aims to protect and rehabilitate the marine environment through direct, professional action, as well as by educating people about the threats we are facing.
You may view a short introductory video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78JdgGyyDEI
The Team’s recent achievements:
• 13 coastal clean-up operations
• Lifting of 400+ of sunken boats and yachts
• Lifting of 40+ tons of fishing nets from coral reefs
• Clean up of 150+ tons of harmful waste to the coral reef
• Installation of 70+ Mooring buoys to protect coral reefs from destruction of boat/ship anchors
• 10 rescue operations to save marine creatures
• 3 International Awards from the United Nations in marine and environmental protection
• Conducting numerous exhibitions, workshops, and seminars to spread environmental awareness
• KuwaitTube project to document the team’s work, achievements, and victories to spread environmental awareness through the Internet
• Establishment of 25 underwater artificial reefs within “Jaber Al-Kuwait” marine conservation
• First successful coral transplantation project in Kuwait
• First participants in the Gulf Region in CoralWatch with 400+ entries
• In 2009 the team returned from DEMA Show in the U.S. after being honored and recognized with NAUI’s Environmental Enrichment Award for the2nd time. It was the only award amongst 130+ diving organizations and over 7 million NAUI divers.
• In 2012 the team has been recognized and awarded the prestigious Ford Environmental Grant in coordination with UNESCO

Young people constitute a large segment of Moroccan society, making their participation and their opportunity for freedom of expression and access to transparency a top priority. Darblanca’s message reinforces the use of the media community in Moroccan society as one of the mechanisms to reflect the interests of the youth generation in expressing their opinions and ideas of social, cultural and political and economic development. The idea is to create options for young people to get involved and participate actively in societal development, and to work in maximizing the use of Internet and technology positively among young people in Morocco as an effective tool for community empowerment.

The Global Shapers Tunis Hub (GSTH) is a group of young leaders committed to positively impacting their environment through initiatives and projects in partnership with public authorities, the private sector and civil society. The global shapers community is an initiative of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and now has 202 hubs worldwide.

The WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) – the basis for the Competitiveness report Tunisia was not included in this year – is based on 12 pillars ranging from institutions and infrastructure to technological readiness and market size. In addition to these, the 2012-2013 Competitiveness Report has made a concerted effort to include for the first time two additional indicators: environmental and social sustainability. This fits within the WEF’s development of a concept it is calling Sustainable Competitiveness, which it describes it, is “the search for a development model that would balance economic prosperity, environmental stewardship and social sustainability.” This new development model, we believe, is key in helping solve the main challenges facing Tunisia today.

With my fellow Global Shapers we are working to create a Sustainable Competitiveness Council (SCC) comprised of representatives of the private and public sectors, as well as civil society. Among its objectives would be to promote a new model for Tunisia’s growth that integrates sustainability, develop unique indicators to measure social and environmental sustainability and build a database of case studies that illustrate the ability of Tunisian businesses and public initiatives that have successfully taken steps towards more socially and environmentally responsible operations. If we succeed, we will create the first SCC in the world and become a model for the region in proving how sustainability can improve a country’s overall competitiveness especially during challenging times.

Our vision is to see the youth of today’s Iraq leading the change in the course of the country’s future, seeing as the youth community of the country is having so much trouble knowing their basic needs and rights and how to achieve and protect them, and also lack the basic concepts of leadership, so to pass those obstacles, we must first supply the youth with the much needed experiences and skills that are required in each and every successful leader, and in the same time let them have hands-on experience and knowledge of the human rights and volunteerism.

This initiative aims to organize a series of trainings and workshops for Iraqi youth in topics that are most important to them, including the topics of youth leadership, advocacy, entrepreneurship, human rights and health awareness, provided by highly qualified young trainers, facilitators and experts in those fields, in order to provide the local community of young rising leaders who would serve the country and take it to the shores of peace and prosperty.

In a war wounded country like Iraq, where the concept of free and independent media and journalism is brand new, it is highly expected not to have a large number of professional journalists or independent and free media and publications. In addition, most of the journalists and media publications focus on political, economic, and war issues to the extent that no one cares to write about culture. Young journalists mostly are left with the idea that writing about hot-button issues is important, and culture is not wroth writing about. The value of writing about culture needs to be restored in the Iraqi media, and Iraqi journalists need to be trained to improve their skills in this area.
My project has the following objectives:
-Raising the awareness and restoring the value and importance of culture among Iraqi print and photo journalists.
-Bringing print and photo journalists from different backgrounds, religions, and ethnicities together to break the prejudice and stereotype and to give them an opportunity to learn from each other and share their stories and experiences.
-Training Iraqi journalists through intensive workshops and online workshops and seminars.
-Guiding journalists and showing them different and possible angles for stories.
-Supervising the articles and helping the journalists to produce high-quality articles.
-Ultimately, teaching journalists the techniques of leadership to help their fellow journalists in their city or hometown.