Blog Post

In parts of Russia, a lack of social and employment opportunities can lead to self-destructive behavior. An independent evaluation found that one of IREX's programs helps youth build leadership skills and engage with their communities.

As a volunteer in Russia, I was frequently asked to speak to youth and educators about community service in the United States. Preparing for these presentations, I reflected on the well-accepted culture of “pitching in” within the US and on the recognized value of service in helping young people develop confidence, a sense of responsibility, practical skills, and a greater awareness of social issues.

The extraordinary power of youth to change their own worlds and the world around them strikes me anew every day.I see this power manifest in diverse forms and settings – from the Russian program participant who created a break-dancing school to engage at-risk youth in her small town, to the two teenagers from MetroTeenAIDS who, last week, addressed more than 70 international development professionals about their role in educating thousands of other youth in Washington, DC, about STDs and HIV testing.

Two-dozen children welcome me into the school's library - a rare space in most Ugandan primary schools. But this is no ordinary school, and their headmistress, Olivia Muhumza, no ordinary individual.

I am writing from the Philippines, where I spent the past week meeting with representatives of the vibrant civil society sector to discuss the potential for programming related to youth and conflict mitigation on the island of Mindanao. On the surface, the Philippines is perhaps the most accessible country in Southeast Asia. In a country of more than 7,000 islands and numerous languages, English is the common language and there is a fondness for anything from the United States– from fast food to malls to jeeps refashioned as the uniquely Filipino form of mass transport known as the “jeepney.” Yet, I discovered that everything in the Philippines is more complicated than it first appears.

When the Thomson Reuters Foundation recently released the results of its poll on “The world’s five most dangerous countries for women”, Somalia, one of IREX’s program countries, was ranked fifth. We asked WAWA (the We Are Women Activists Network), one of our local partners on the Uniting Communities to Mitigate Conflict (UCMC) project, for their initial reactions to the report.

“The only constant is change.” -- Heraclitus

On July 1, 1968, a new international nonprofit was created, IREX (the International Research & Exchanges Board). As we prepared to celebrate Founders’ Day this year, we reviewed some archival materials recently sent by the organization’s first President, Allen Kassof. The Communications team and I enjoyed going through the old photos, comparing IREX then to the IREX we know now.

Forty-three years ago today, IREX was created to help advance exchanges, not just of people, but of ideas. As we celebrate IREX’s founding, we honor its original charge by continuing to bring people together, to link institutions both within and across countries and regions, and to host events where the latest thinking and research is shared with the world.

Language transcends borders. That’s why I began studying Arabic six years ago. But when I met with female activists in a café in Fez yesterday, we used three (plus) languages to discuss challenges facing youth in Morocco. I asked questions in classical Arabic or fus-ha, and they answered in French with interludes in the local Moroccan dialect — an amalgam of Berber, fus-ha, and French. I summarized in fus-ha what I had pieced together, and they confirmed my accuracy with nods and giggles.

IREX has been working with public access to information / telecenters for more than 15 years. In that time we’ve encountered many of the difficulties. How do the telecenters continue operation after outside funding dries up? How do you embed the telecenter into the community? As our thinking on this topic has evolved over the years, we’ve begun focusing our efforts on the one existing public institution that is owned by the local community and can provide a variety of information services: the public library.