Help Haiti

A massive, 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti near the capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, January 12th.  There are several GYV alumni with family suffering in Haiti.  Find a relief organization and donate now. 

•   Haitian-born music star Wyclef Jean  has a charitable organization www.yele.org.  Via twitter he recommends donating $5. You can text a $5 donation to 501501
• Donate to Unicef
• Help Habitat for Humanity respond  
• Donate or volunteer through Red Cross  

 Go to PBS to learn more from people working on the ground.

Living your values

How does one person make a difference?  How do you take what you value in life (justice, integrity, fair play, compassion) and apply it?  How can you become a leader?  These are all questions pondered during a panel discussion with our two recipients of the 2009 Service to Humanity Award.  Watch this 6 minute video for some inspiration.

30 Things We’ve Learned from Each Other

Collected from Iraqi, American, and other International Participants and Staff

1. New Dance moves
2. How to communicate – with and without language
3. The Iraqis know as much about American music as the Americans do
4. How to do Henna tattoos
5. How to write our names in Arabic
6. We all enjoy Peace building – yesterday one class was literally building
7. How to make some of the new sounds in Arabic
8. Jewelry making
9. How to dance the Chobi (Iraqi dance)
10. Telling time in Arabic
11. How to ask for someone’s number in several languages
12. Book cover making and decoupage
13. That everyone’s experience of conflict is different
14. Ping pong techniques
15. How to say “hello” and “thank you” in lots of different languages
16. The Iraqis speak Kurdish, Assyrian, and some European languages, in addition to Arabic
17. About Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr.
18. Yellah!  (Arabic for “Let’s Go!”)
19. The way we tell dates is different – the Iraqis say the day first, then the month, and Americans do the opposite
20. We all like the same music
21. There is no verb “to be” in Arabic
22. How to make collages
23. Improving our English
24. How to make tacos
25. What guacamole is
26. How to do paper mache
27. That Iraqi families tend to be larger, and sometimes extended families all share one large house
28. Iraqi weddings are HUGE!
29. That not all Iraqis are Muslim and not all Americans are Christian
30. That we all like to play soccer!

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