The role of apprenticeship programs in the MENA region

May 29, 2013.

The past 10 years in Jordan thousands of disadvantaged youth have been assisted to obtain basic education credentials to access accredited vocational training and improved employment opportunities.  The success of programs providing such assistance reaffirms that learning is central to human identity, and is essentially about social participation. Every youth is highly motivated in a social environment that respects their identity as learners and where they contribute to the learning process.

Apprenticeship/vocational skills programs are a critical means of tapping into this...MORE

A dimming light for Middle Eastern youth

May 29, 2013.

In the side streets in cities and towns you find them – street lamps casting pools of light in the night on young men, sitting, standing, smoking. Perhaps there are more smartphones alongside the cigarette packs, but otherwise the scene has changed little in the 32 years I have been in the Middle East.

Some have been able to get off the street corner and can be found sitting in the Internet cafés staring at the bluish light of their monitor screens chatting through Facebook and Google.

Whether it’s light coming from outside on the street corner or in the cafes, two things...MORE

Celebrating 25 Years: The People Make it Possible

May 23, 2013.

On a Saturday evening in May, about 150 friends of Questscope gathered to commemorate 25 years of putting the last, first. In a room overlooking the Minneapolis skyline in the Walker Arts Museum, attendees had many reasons to toast. Beautiful weather had finally emerged from an unseasonably cold spring, food and music was plentiful and Questscope had persisted through a quarter century. 

It was a celebration of the organization, and also a much-deserved acknowledgement of the people behind it. As Dr. Rhodes said during a Q&A at the event: “The glue that binds Questscope...MORE