Monday, February 20, 2017

Representing the Kuwait Dive Team at OCEANS 2017

I've spent this weekend at the London ExCeL Exhibition Centre, talking with outdoor adventurers about the Kuwait Dive Team and marine conservation at a big Outdoors Show. 


Two years ago, we were at the London International Dive Show, where my audience was mostly divers themselves. LIDS is now part of a much broader operation, so I've been talking with all kinds of folks. 

A few of the Team members journeyed from Kuwait to speak with potential partners and swap ideas, so it's been nice to catch up with them as well!


We have a bunch of our environmental education tools with us, and the IncredibleOceans.org group are here with their plastics recycling project, so I've been doing ocean-friendly arts and crafts during quiet times with few visitors.


We also met and spoke with a number of other conservation charities that we hope to invite to Kuwait or visit at their Headquarters for joint operations.


I'll need to get back to writing this week, but it's been fun to do a mini "fieldwork" weekend in the middle of frantic typing and theorising!

Thursday, February 2, 2017

AMENDS: We will not be shut down

A great many of you have heard me talk about AMENDS, the American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford. A week spent connecting with activists from across the region changed my life in profound ways.

Each of my three research partners (Dar Si Hmad in Morocco; the Kuwait Dive Team; and Lebanon's Media Association for Peace) are AMENDS connections. The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus, whose UK tour I helped manage, was born after Forbes Under 30's Micah Hendler shared the idea at the first AMENDS Summit at Stanford University. 

AMENDS Fellows are my best friends, my closest colleagues, and my greatest hope for the world. They are people like Nihal, who works against sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo; Fadi, a young Palestinian entrepreneur whose alternative energy company is supplying the West Bank with electricity through wind power; and Ali, who brings literacy programmes to underprivileged youth in Yemen.

The 2017 AMENDS Summit is scheduled for 19-23 April at Stanford. Thanks to recent events, at least 8 of this year's incredible delegates will not be allowed entry to the US in order to spend this week sharing ideas, building their initiatives, and finding ways to collaborate for greater impact.

Today, the Stanford Student Team released a statement about how the executive order on immigration is impacting our work. The long and short of it: Communication matters. Relationships matter. Time spent together matters. And we are doing everything we can to make sure that this year's 33 amazing participants (selected from a pool of over 500 applicants) have the chance to have the same world-changing week I did.

 

Read more about the 2017 AMENDS Delegates, their initiatives, and what the Stanford Team is working for: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/02/01/amends-we-refuse-to-be-shut-down-by-trumps-ban/

Learn more about AMENDS and get involved: http://amends.stanford.edu/