Iraqi Student Brings Hope to United States

One of Global Sports Partners’ core services is facilitating exchange. Deb Packwood works in Iraq as GSP’s country coordinator. Upon selecting an Iraqi student and an Iraqi volunteer to travel to the USA for the World Youth Peace Summit* and the World Scholar Athlete Games*, the United States embassy in Baghdad tasked GSP with facilitating this exchange. 

GSP partner Andrew Clever met with the scholar athlete, Haider, and the volunteer, Zaid, for cultural orientation and assistance in preparing Haider’s Pathways to Peace Proposal–a social action/social entrepreneurship project that would be refined at the Summit. Clever also wrote the grant for the project, arranged travel, assisted in the visa application process and the application to participate in the Summit, and debriefed Haider and Zaid upon their return to Iraq. 

(Editor’s note: Haider’s Pathways to Peace Proposal was selected as one of the top ten, and he met with Colin Powell to discuss the proposal.)

* “The World Youth Peace Summit's mission is to develop scholar-athletes and scholar-artists from around the world as well as other interested individuals or groups into successful peace advocates. By providing the opportunity to study peace policies through a week-long intensive series of lectures and workshops, the WYPS furnished participants with practical knowledge of how to develop and implement their own peace initiatives successfully in their home communities.” http://www.youthpeacesummit.org

* The World Scholar Athlete Games is a peace initiative of the Institute for International Sports and takes place as a part of the World Youth Peace Summit. The participants, numbering close to 1,000, come from virtually every country in the world. The five day event gives scholar athletes opportunities to participant in a number of sporting events including fencing, golf, swimming, lacrosse, creative writing, dance, photography, visual arts and much more. In addition world-renown individuals will speak on the topics of personal social responsibility, leadership, fair play and ethical technology.  http://www.internationalsport.org/wsag/wsag-intro.cfm