Student Ambassadors Blog From the Middle East

On November 27, six Mercersburg student ambassadors and three faculty members departed for the Middle East to investigate three global issues with the potential to touch every one of the world’s six billion people.

As part of the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) Challenge 20/20 program, Mercersburg is partnering with the American British Academy (an independent school in Muscat, Oman) to examine “peacekeeping, conflict prevention, and combating terrorism.”

“Today, we had the opportunity to visit the city of Jerusalem,” writes lower-middler Lorraine Simonis of Philadelphia on November 30. “Although we would have liked to visit Bethlehem, we were not able to, as it lies in Palestinian territory. Therefore, we went to a a hill overlooking the town instead to take some pictures. This further emphasized the significance of borders, whether cultural or official, in the region.”

The Mercersburg group is visiting Oman, a country on the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, for a symposium on the same topic. The hope is that students from Oman will, in turn, visit Mercersburg for a symposium during the 2008–09 school year.

The program is based on Jean François Rischard’s 2003 book, High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. A school in the United States teams with another school somewhere in the world to examine one of the 20 global problems in Rischard’s book, and formulates tangible, local solutions to the problem.

To read more about the trip as it happens, see the students’ blog.