“He found a glimmer of hope in the ruins of disaster…” ~ Gabriel Garcia Márquez / Love in the Time of Cholera
The VIP.fund has responded to the coronavirus by organizing remote activities to engage and inspire both refugees and support populations inside and outside the camps.
Since early March, our new Peer-2-Peer mentoring project includes American students from Project Turquoise in the U.S. mentoring students in Jordan’s Za’atari camp who are now attending Zarqa University. This program provides students in lockdown with a window on the world by exchanging cultural experiences, discussing everything from the similarities of human experience to practical things like how to write a professional email. Peer-2-Peer is led by Hiba Salem, VIP.fund Junior Board Member and research associate at Cambridge. Hiba is no stranger to Za’atari where she did her doctoral research on Syrian refugee education. The P2P program will scale up to include content webinars as we build more bridges and connect with youth impacted by conflict.
We hosted the renowned LA poet/rapper Omar Offendum in a music jam with edSeed student musicians sharing their talents in the mix: Ghassan Hamoud, software engineering freshman at Zarqa U. and graduate of Action for Hope on traditional Syrian oud; Ahmad Kharoub, English major at ZU on classical guitar (self-taught during his displacement years); and Nawwar Al-Hamwi, edSeed scholar now in Germany who plays the guitar professionally.
