Main Projects / Activities

•Our internship program, which brings together gifted university students from around the world and introduces them to Cairo and Egypt, is our most important component. Interns offer their research and translations to outreach and social media initiatives or the electronic journal Arab West Report through their work in the office.

•We established a refugee learning center in 2019 as we also see that education is a fundamental human right that keeps refugee children from falling behind and gives them the tools they need to help their community. Our goal is to offer affordable, internationally recognized secondary education to non-Egyptian pupils from problematic backgrounds. Our curriculum’s global perspective allows us to prepare our pupils to be self-sufficient, contributing members of society. Since its 2007 NGO registration in Egypt, the Center for Arab-West Understanding (CAWU) has promoted communication between students from a wide range of nations, cultures, and religious perspectives.

•Over many years, the focus of international media debate has been on extremism and war in the Middle East and North Africa, highlighting contentious and frequently unfavorable viewpoints. Dialogue Across Borders (DAB) seeks to produce significant resources for intercultural/interreligious understanding and peaceful cooperation by presenting a distinctively nuanced perspective on Middle Eastern cultural and religious debate and its significance for peace and conflict resolution through interviews, book/dissertation summaries, media translations, articles, and other varied genres. DAB seeks the same goal as CAWU, which is to foster and promote intercultural dialogue through a variety of resources that all seek mutual understanding and partnership.

•The Center for Arab-West Understanding also cosponsored a significant interfaith initiative with the Center of Christian-Muslim Understanding and Partnership in Zamalek called “A Journey of Learning.” The program brought together a wide range of participants from Harvard University, the Alexandria School of Theology (Anglican/Episcopal), the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary, St. Leo the Great Coptic Catholic Seminary, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Egypt, and Al-Azhar University. This is in tandem with other interfaith initiatives that are cosponsored by the Center for Christian Muslim Understanding and Partnership (CCMUP).

•We seek to connect the youth of today with important political and cultural figures that may represent to them both a source of wisdom and a beacon of hope. We organized a meeting with Ambassador Erbel, who was the former ambassador to Iran, Iraq, and Egypt, as well as Diplomat Ahmed Orabi. Both extensively spoke about circumstances in the Middle East, their life lessons, and how to build a future of hope within the region.