Sixty Arab students from the Middle East worked with their American peers to develop and refine their Internet skills. These teenage students, arriving the previous day from Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, learned the basics of webpage development and digital imaging at KOL’s training facility located in Reston, Virginia. They took part in a live global webcast of the technology trivia game “Who Wants to be a Multi-media-aire?” at KOL’s studio in the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) in Herndon, Virginia.

The students are participating in the U.S. Department of State-funded scholarship program Partnerships for Learning Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program. YES provides secondary school students in Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries the opportunity to live and study in the United States for an academic year. Scholarship recipients live with host families, attend U.S. high schools, and participate in special enrichment activities that help them develop a comprehensive understanding of American culture and develop leadership skills. Likewise, these students serve as cultural ambassadors for their home countries, representing their own rich heritage to their American host communities.

AMIDEAST, which manages the application and screening process for the YES program in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, West Bank/Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Yemen, is coordinating the arrangements for this event with KOL. AMIDEAST is part of a consortium that is headed by AYUSA International which has provided opportunities for more than 37,000 students from the U.S. and around the world to live and study through its programs.

The KOL training camp will provide to both American and Arab students the opportunity to learn from each other both technological skills and cultural distinctions. The skill sets that are learned there will facilitate the use of the Internet for opening a window to a new world with new ways of communicating and learning.