“The Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program (IYLEP) is an annual series of summer exchange programs in the United States for Iraqi undergraduate students sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The program gives young Iraqis the chance to build their leadership skills and provides the tools necessary to developing their own youth-led projects for community change upon returning home.”
Source: https://www.meridian.org/programs/iylep/
Program Summary
Because of COVID travel restrictions, CC has been selected to virtually host 13 Iraqi and 4 American high school students for two weeks next month. As part of World Learning’s Iraqi Youth Leadership Exchange Program (IYLEP), we will provide rich virtual home stays with Center for Global Studies families. We will also facilitate “field trips” focusing on civic, environmental, and social topics that are affecting the lives of those living in our region – and in Iraq – including local government, education, climate change, and social injustice.
CC will utilize applied theatre techniques and skills (that we first used with our Mandala Theatre colleagues in Nepal) to inspire dialogue, cultural exchange, and creative problem solving.
From CC's President
“Stepping up to the challenge provided us by the restraints of virtual programming, we are more than excited about this opportunity to implement our “arts for understanding” methodology in this youth leadership hosting exchange. We will be exploring thoughtful civic and social issues affecting both USA and Iraqi youth while providing as nurturing a virtual experience as possible for our overseas guests.”
– Alan Steckler, Founder & President
Dates
CC will be facilitating two weeks of impactful programming for the student participants from July 5-18,2021.
Our goal is to provide the students with an experience that combines a meaningful home stay relationship with a significant encounter into the strengths and challenges of local community life.
Host Family Activities include
- Sharing recipes and even a meal with one another
- Through video, photography or art creation, finding, recording, and sharing aspects of daily family and/or community life that are funny, surprising, revealing, scary, etc.
- Preparing a simple interactive entertainment session with singing, music, and/or dancing
- Holding a current events discussion
- Selecting a movie to watch and discuss together
- Demonstrating and/or teaching a favorite sport
- Playing an online game together
Host Community Partner Activities
Sessions include:
- A visit to Norwalk’s The Maritime Aquarium combined with a local environmental activist, to examine the challenges facing our communities’ environmental health and equality.
- A visit with local social entrepreneur and BOD member Brad Kerner who has just founded ECOoperative, an eco-friendly cooperative, to “help local artists, makers and creators bring their products to market while maintaining a fair price for their creations, which benefit people and the planet.” He will explore with participants the importance of nurturing the arts and artists to maintain healthy communities.
- A joint session with local faith-based and/or civic-based youth addressing social injustice, gender, and religious inequities as experienced in the local community. We’ll use discussion and image theatre strategies to help both the Iraqi and USA participants get to the heart of these issues, gaining empathy and a more profound understanding of the historic roots of these challenges.
Program Facilitators
Alan Steckler, CC Founder & President, will oversee the IYLEP two-week home community experience. He has facilitated many of the virtual/in-person exchanges.
Tim Steckler will help facilitate each of the virtual exchange via IVC (interactive video conferences) sessions and the theatre sessions. Tim has conducted theatre-for-social-change workshops with youth in several countries, including teenage refugees in Jordan, Germany, and the West Bank.
Contact Alan Steckler at asteckler@creativeconnections.org for more information.
