Arab Peace Corps Hopes to Provide Youth with Something to Live For
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Sami Jamil Jadallah has a big idea for the Arab world.
Fed up with leaders applying war as a solution to the region’s problems, Jadallah wants to provide youth with something to live for rather than die for. Using the Peace Corps as a model, Jadallah hopes to tackle some of the Arab world’s most pressing issues by providing youth with the skills and self-worth they need to contribute to their communities. He’s calling it the Arab Peace Corps.
An ambitious project, Jadallah has confidence that the Peace Corps’ model can be replicated.
“I think the Peace Corps is the most successful foreign policy initiative in the history of the United States,” Jadallah says. “It brings American volunteers closer to the communities they serve in, and it certainly brings people from around the world closer to America. We think we can do the same for other communities, especially those within the Arab World.”
The Arab Peace Corps’ aim is to not only tap into the potential of well-educated, committed youth from within the Arab world and other impoverished communities across the globe, but to also counter the lure of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra.
“Most of the fighters flocking to Syria and Iraq, whether from Chechnya or North Africa or Saudi Arabia, are youth who are politically marginalized, jobless, living in poverty with little self-worth and little hope for the future,” Jadallah told Voice of America in February.
Jadallah’s aware of the enormity of the task, which is why he wants to start small. The Arab Peace Corps’ first programs are designed to send a few dozen volunteers to work in health and education in Yemen, teach English in Palestine, and help former prisoners reintegrate in Morocco.
The Arab Peace Corps has already won over the hearts and minds of many Middle Eastern experts and commentators. Writing in the Saudi Gazette, Tariq Al-Meena thinks the idea is anything but far-fetched.
It also has its doubters. To them Jadallah says, “So did President Kennedy and the Peace Corps. But the Arab world has educated leaders who want to volunteer in their own countries or elsewhere. The Arab world has youth who want to belong to something. They want an education and jobs like everyone else. The Arab world has culture worth sharing, partnerships worth forging, wars worth ending, lives worth living. Why not the Arab world? Why not now?”
Born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh, Jadallah immigrated to the US in 1962, served in the US armed services (as did his four brothers), and received his doctorate from Indiana University after nine straight years of schooling before embarking on a career on Wall Street and in international legal and business consultancy. He is most recently the Founder and Executive Director of the New Arab Foundation think tank, of which the Arab Peace Corps is one of its main initiatives. With the majority of the Foundation’s board being women and represented from the US, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Canada and other countries, Jadallah has surrounded himself with global voices eager to implement new solutions.
“The world has given countless lives and spent trillions of dollars on failed policies and wars,” Jadallah says. “Let’s try something else. It is in times of wars, conflict, chaos, terrorism and despair that investments in peace and development become more urgent. “