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Education

Over the past year, Meedan has built YALLAH, a cross-language discussion forum for the alumni of Qatar Foundation International’s student exchange programs. The idea for the forum came from two QFI program alumni, Fahad al-Nahdi and Damon Mallory, who envisioned a youth-led community of global citizens able to navigate national differences, dispense with stereotypes, and build stronger relations with their peers.

The YALLAH Forum, which stands for Youth Allied to Learn, Lead and Help, uses machine translation with user corrections to host moderated cross-language discussions on a range of topics. The student-run program helps 13 – 18 year-olds from the U.S. and Qatar to continue working together, strengthening their relationships, and building the skills necessary to be responsible global citizens. It emphasizes the importance of combining knowledge, engagement and action to address issues of global and local concern. YALLAH provides young people with the skills needed to identify and research issues of interest, and the tools necessary to take concrete steps to address them.