U.S. Families Connect with a New Family in Senegal

In Learning Life’s fourth live, international, family-to-family dialogue, we returned to Senegal to talk about food, education, politics, music and dance, and more with a new Senegalese family.

On Saturday, September 18, Learning Life volunteers gathered with members of two American families in Washington D.C.’s Anacostia Library to connect with the Gueyes, a family of eight living in a suburb of Senegal’s capital, Dakar.  This was Learning Life’s fourth live dialogue, following our first with a different family in Dakar three weeks ago, and two dialogues with four families in El Salvador in the interim.

Following introductions, the Senegalese family siblings, ages 7 to 27, launched into questions they had written down.  “What significant events are happening in your country right now?” Samba, 16, asked rhetorically with a smile.  That question quickly led where Samba expected: to the fast-approaching U.S. presidential election.  The families on both sides of the Atlantic expressed support for Barack Obama, but some ambivalence about Hillary Clinton, and above all, Donald Trump.

The questions then turned to education as the oldest Gueye sibling, Moukhamadou, a 27-year old English and French language teacher, asked Elsie, one of the Americans who is a literacy coach, why she teaches.  “I teach because I know how much education has done for me,” Elsie responded.  Elsie, at age 21, has a Master’s degree in public policy.  Moukhamadou, in turn, is pursuing a Master’s degree.

The conversation moved to food and culture as the Americans in turn asked the Senegalese what significant events are occurring in Senegal.  As the Gueyes explained, they recently celebrated Eid Al-Adha, a four-day Muslim holiday in which, following tradition, they slaughtered a sheep and shared its meat.  The Gueyes explained that they often eat from a common bowl rather than on separate plates.  The American participants, ages 7 to 42, considered the merit of eating from a common bowl — namely, the keener feelings of sharing and belonging — against hygienic concern about the handwashing practices of those eating from the same bowl.

As with one of our recent dialogues with Salvadoran families, this Senegalese-American dialogue finished with music and dancing as the participants shared songs and dances they like.  With smiles and waves, the families resolved to dialogue again in mid-October.

Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative offers American families (and eventually all participating families across the world) that have few if any opportunities to travel the chance to dialogue and collaborate on projects with families in other nations for their mutual educational and cultural enrichment.  In coming months, all participating families will begin a project that will gather their photos from across the world answering the same question: what is the past, the present, and the future of your community?

Stay tuned for more…

Special thanks to Learning Life volunteers, Emilie Mondon-Konan for her assistance with language interpreting on the American side, and Samantha Macfarlane and Moukhamadou Gueye for their help with interpreting and organizing this dialogue on the Senegalese side.   

U.S.-El Salvador Live Dialogue Leads to Dance

On Sunday, September 4, in Learning Life’s second live, international, family-to-family dialogue, personal introductions quickly led to latin dance introductions.

In this first meeting between two American families and four Salvadoran families, all family participants were asked to introduce themselves not only with their names and occupations, and in the case of the children, their age and school grade, but with something interesting about themselves they wished to share with their foreign interlocutors.  Eduardo, a tall, soft-spoken, fourteen-year old Salvadoran boy was the first to speak.

“Me gusta jugar el fútbol y bailar” (“I like to play soccer and to dance”), he said.

“Que tipo de baile?” (“What kind of dance?”)  asked Paul, the American dialogue moderator.

“Bachata” — a type of latin dance which originated in the Dominican Republic — Eduardo responded.

“Puedes mostrarnos?” (“Can you show us?”) asked Paul with a smile.  

Eduardo smiled in return.  Literally less than a minute later the dozen or so assembled Salvadoran parents and children moved their seats to form a dance floor, selected and started playing music, identified Eduardo’s dancing partner — Delmi, a seventeen-year old girl from another of the Salvadoran families — and off they were both, smiling and dancing bachata in an office in El Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador, before their American audience 3,200 miles away (by car) in Washington D.C.

This proved to be the first of three Salvadoran introductions that led to dance demonstrations — of a Salvadoran folk dance, and “reggaetón,” a music and dance of Puerto Rican origin that blends reggae, hip hop, and latin influences.  The Americans, shy in the moment, nonetheless promised video demonstrations of their own passions — ballet in thirteen-year old Elyse’s case, and basketball in eleven-year old Kaniya’s case.

The American and Salvadoran families went on to discuss serious topics, including the problems their communities face.  The Salvadorans reported problems with the privatization of water, and criminal gangs that threaten legal businesses and innocent bystanders.  The Americans noted problems with youth gangs in school and police mistreatment of African Americans.

This second live, international dialogue — organized by Learning Life in partnership with CRIPDES, a grassroots organization working to empower Salvadorans in some 300 rural communities across El Salvador — followed the first dialogue between two American families in Washington D.C. and a Senegalese family in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.  These dialogues are central to Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative, which works to nurture family and youth development through international dialogue and collaboration.

Through November 2016, Learning Life staff and volunteers plan to organize a series of pilot dialogues between families in Washington D.C., Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador, Dakar, Senegal.  Stay tuned for more!

We would like to thank CRIPDES and Learning Life volunteers Karen Tituana and Derrick Costa for their help in making this second dialogue possible.  Thanks also to the nonprofit UNIFI for allowing us to use their cafe, Artdrenaline, in Washington D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood, to conduct this live dialogue.    

Internship: Help Organize Live International Dialogues

About Learning Life and Its Citizen Diplomacy Initiative

Learning Life is an educational nonprofit in Washington D.C. that seeks to spread learning in everyday life beyond school walls.  Learning Life has recently begun a Citizen Diplomacy Initiative that engages lower-income American families in Washington D.C. in live internet video dialogues or “virtual exchanges” with similar foreign families in order to foster global citizenship and family and youth development.

About the Internship

Learning Life is now recruiting metro D.C. university students to serve as interns.  Interns assist with finding and screening eligible families in D.C. and abroad, connecting and coordinating with nonprofit partners abroad, organizing and moderating the live international dialogues, research and drafting of documents, document translation and dialogue interpreting, and mentoring of D.C. youth involved in our Citizen Diplomacy Initiative.

Interns must be able to commit eight hours per week.  Learning Life’s founder, Dr. Paul Lachelier usually holds weekly four-hour work meetings with interns as a group, then assigns each intern four hours of homework.

This opportunity is unpaid, but offers substantive, resume-building experience on an innovative international initiative, and a formal reference and/or recommendation letter given satisfactory performance.

The Interns We Are Looking For

Applicants should be interested in international affairs, languages, community organizing and/or social justice.  Applicants should also be outgoing, organized, detail-oriented, motivated and responsible (e.g., complete work well and on deadline, and show up to meetings on time).  Native or fluent speakers of Spanish, Arabic, French or Tagalog are especially encouraged to apply.  People who have lived in or have family in Washington D.C.’s Wards 7 or 8 (D.C. east of the Anacostia River), and/or in Latin America, Africa, Asia or the Middle East are also encouraged to apply.

How to Apply  

Email Dr. Lachelier directly at paul@learninglife.info with your resume and times you are available in the next seven days for a phone interview.

Our First, Live, International, Family-to-Family Dialogue

After seven months of organizing and preparation, we are happy to announce that our first live, international, family-to-family dialogue successfully took place today at the Anacostia Library in Washington D.C.

The dialogue connected members of two American families in D.C. — a grandmother and her grandson, and a father and his two daughters — with a nine-member family in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, located on the coast at the western-most tip of Africa. After introducing themselves, the families freely asked each other questions about their use of media (Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, etc.), their food, music, modes of transportation, and cost of living, among other subjects.  As the American families learned, residents of Dakar are not that different from residents of Washington D.C. as fellow major city dwellers connected to common media, music, food and other goods.

This dialogue was the first in a series of pilot dialogues Learning Life has planned over the next few months between American families in Washington D.C. and families in El Salvador, Senegal, and Jordan.  Working with a resourceful team of volunteers and student interns, Learning Life began building this Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI) from scratch in late January 2016, and has since found partners and families in Washington D.C. and these four nations across the world.  In addition, to enable the families to communicate with each other in their respective languages, we have recruited volunteer interpreters and a set of common documents (surveys, dialogue guides, country info sheets, etc.) in the four different languages the families speak: English, Spanish, French, and Arabic.

Our purpose in building CDI is to tap into the power of the internet to nurture international peace and youth development.  Our world is clearly globalizing (see our Five Ways World Affairs Affect Us All), but transnational travel is still too costly for many of the world’s people.  Moreover, tourism is not necessarily educational, and the use of “virtual exchange” (dialogue via the internet) for educational and cultural enrichment is too often limited to universities.  In pursuit of our mission to spread learning in everyday life beyond school walls, CDI connects families rather than schools as a way to make international affairs approachable to more people.  We also focus on families that have less money and fewer educational and travel experiences in order to help address deepening inequalities and extent opportunity to more people.  And, we do so free of charge to our participating families.

In the coming months, we will keep you posted as the dialogues progress, and we move toward a first international collaboration between the children involved in the dialogues.  Stay tuned!

To support Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative, please make a donation here.  To volunteer, please visit our CDI page to learn about the various ways you can get involved, then contact us at email@learninglife.info to set up a phone meeting.

Thank you for your interest and support!

Thanks to Learning Life volunteers Emilie Mondon-Konan, Derrick Costa and Samantha Macfarlane for respectively helping with French-English interpreting, photo and video recording, and organizing of the dialogue on the Senegalese side.