Program Overview
Program Overview
Picture your summer in Jordan
Working together with locals to renovate a school in need and lending a hand at a local health clinic. Practicing the art of Arabic calligraphy or the complicated steps of a traditional Middle Eastern folk dance. Picture yourself learning to barter at a colorful outdoor market or enjoying a concert at a beautiful Roman theater.
A vibrant 21st–century city that is also home to countless ancient treasures, Amman offers a rich culture you can see and touch. Renowned for the warmth and hospitality of its people, Jordan provides a shining example of religious tolerance and a model of peaceful, coexisting cultures.
Whether you’re standing in awe before the magnificent treasury at Petra or teaching a group of school children how to use computers for research, you’ll find fresh, intercultural perspectives and a sense of community with the CIEE Leadership Academy in Jordan.
Service
Service
In Jordan, each week brings new opportunities to learn and serve.
You’ll begin by taking part in the renovation and beautification of a school in need. Using environmentally friendly materials and practices, you could work on anything from repainting walls and putting up new white-boards to helping install heating equipment, making the school a more welcoming and productive place to learn.
Other projects include helping out at a local health clinic and taking part in youth development and team–building activities with groups of children from impoverished neighborhoods.
Together, these projects offer you the opportunity to interact with Jordanians and work with them in a meaningful pursuit. They also inspire a sense of community and provide you with the knowledge that continued efforts like these will make a real difference in the community.
Leadership
Leadership
The goal of the CIEE Leadership Academy is to train the next generation of innovators, leaders, change makers, and social entrepreneurs—the young people who will help solve the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
In Jordan you’ll explore concepts and develop skills that will help you to think independently, effectively manage situations, and more easily navigate interpersonal experiences throughout your life—preparing you for college and beyond. You’ll do this by:
- Developing a personal portfolio that tells the story of your life—an autobiography that explores your passions and strengths, your dreams and aspirations
- Journaling your experiences while on the program to analyze the meaning and purpose of your life
- Analyzing case studies of young leaders who have become change makers by solving critical social problems
- Applying the skills and concepts you learn in class to real-life scenarios you’re facing every day during your service project
Language
Language
With its cursive alphabet and script that runs from right to left, the Arabic language offers you exciting new challenges and new perspectives.
The goal of the survival language class is to give you a foundation in colloquial Arabic. Beginning with the alphabet, this course gives you the tools you need to be communicative and pushes you to use those tools in your daily interactions. From excursions to service projects, you’ll take part in activities that tie into, and allow you to apply, your language learning.
Living
Living
During your stay, you and your peers will live together at a hostel housed within a Jordanian research institute. With plenty of common space, wireless access, a computer lab, cleaning staff, and 24/7 security, the building provides a clean and safe living environment.
Close to a shopping center and public transportation, and an easy ten minute walk to the CIEE Study Center, the hostel is both convenient and accessible.
Cultural Activities
Cultural Activities
You don’t experience a culture by watching from the sidelines.
Get your hands dirty, preparing Mansaf, the lamb–and–rice-based national dish of Jordan, under the guidance of a professional chef. Learn to belly dance or lead the dabkeh, the traditional line dance of the Levant. Spend time each week practicing your calligraphy, an art form that has critical historical and cultural significance in the Arabic world.
On the weekends, explore sites of interest around and outside of Amman. A tour of the capital city includes the Citadel, the Roman Theater, and a visit to the oldest and greatest sweet shop in Jordan. One week you’ll explore the ancient city of Madaba, renowned for its Byzantine mosaics. The next, you’ll enjoy a trip just outside Amman to a lush, green valley and the city of Iraq AlAmeer.
Local peers will join you on many of these activities—yet another opportunity for you to meet and interact with Jordanian contemporaries and gain real insight into local culture.
week-long tour
week-long tour
Spend your final week in Jordan celebrating the completion of the program while exploring the country with your friends.
Join a tour guide as you cover natural, historical, and environmental points of interests from the north of the country to the south. Navigate the winding canyon that leads to the ancient Nabataean city of Petra and it’s staggering treasury, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Explore the tunnels of a crusader castle, and help cover your peers in Dead Sea mud before taking a float in its dense, salty water.
From visiting with a local family to spending the night in the hilly north, camped out among the pine and olive trees, the week-long tour takes you off Jordan’s well-beaten tourist path giving you a more authentic look into the country’s culture and history.
Program Leader – Marzieh Goudarzi
Program Leader – Marzieh Goudarzi
Marzieh is currently a correspondent with Inter Press Services' (IPS) United Nations Bureau in New York. She earned her bachelor's degree in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College in Los Angeles. As an undergraduate, she studied Arabic for a semester in Jordan and also spent a semester interning at the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York. After graduating, Marzieh returned to Jordan on a year-long Fulbright Fellowship, researching entrepreneurial education programs and their impact on students and economic development with a local Jordanian NGO, Injaz. Wadi Rum, the beautiful desert and natural reserve in the south, is one of her favorite places in all of Jordan and was the site of her first skydiving adventure! She is very excited about guiding students through this country that she loves so much, showing them how cultural immersion can teach understanding and appreciation of the unknown as well as of oneself. Marzieh hopes to remain based in the region, writing as a freelance journalist and pursuing her interests in development work.
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