Looking for NGOs in Jordan, please help

Hello all,
A friend of a friend, Jesse Torrence is looking for an NGO (non governmental organization) in Jordan to work at. He has degrees in International Relations and Economics from Harvard. If you know of any NGOs in Jordan who might be interested, please let Jesse (jesse.torrence@stanfordalumni.org) know. Jesse's e-mail is below:

Dear All,

I will be relocating to the Middle East/North Africa region this December
for
most of next year and am interested in getting involved with some
organizations engaged in development work, particularly in Palestine, Egypt,
Lebanon, Syrian, or Jordan. I'm especially interested in the following
areas:
education, capacity building for Civil Society Orgs.,
microfinance,reproductive health/sexual education (esp. HIV/AIDS
prevention),
and youth exchange. Do any of you know of any organizations(especially
working
in these fields) that could use someone with 2-3 years of experience in NGO
organizational management, project management, grant writing,
fundraising,event planning, and/or community organizing?

My needs in terms of compensation at this point are very minimal and my
availability in terms of time and specific location are still fairly
flexible.

I would greatly appreciate any leads, contacts, or advice.

Thanks!
Jesse Torrence
IR, Econ '02

jesse.torrence@stanfordalumni.org

Google's Arabic-to-English translation ranked first

Google's "still under development" system for Arabic-to-English translation is ranked as best worldwide.

According to NIST:
http://www.nist.gov/speech/tests/mt/mt05eval_official_results_release_20050801_v3.html

Here are the rankings:
Arabic-to-English Task, Large Data Track
1- GOOGLE, BLUE score: 0.5131
2- ISI, 0.4657
3- IBM, 0.4646
4- UMD, 0.4497
5- JHU-CU, 0.4348
6- EDINBURGH, 0.3970
7- SYSTRAN, 0.1079
8- MITRE, 0.0772
9- FSC, 0.0037

Arabic-to-English Task, Unlimited Data Track
Table 2
1- GOOGLE, 0.5137
2- SAKHR, 0.3403
3- ARL, 0.2257

more reading:
Google: The Universal Machine

I Lived In The Garden Of Allah (by Sir R. Bodley)

I read this story in Dale Carnegie's "How to stop worrying and start living", and then found it on the internet. I have to say that it's very inspiring in how to cope with disaster, especially in light of the recent events that struck Jordan. (source)

I Lived In The Garden Of Allah
By R.V.C. Bodley
Descendant of Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford Author of Wind in the Sahara, The Messenger, and fourteen other volumes

IN 1918, I turned my back on the world I had known and went to north-west Africa and lived with the Arabs in the Sahara, the Garden of Allah. I lived there seven years. I learned to speak the language of the nomads. I wore their clothes, I ate their food, and adopted their mode of life, which has changed very little during the last twenty centuries. I became an owner of sheep and slept on the ground in the Arabs' tents. I also made a detailed study of their religion. In fact, I later wrote a book about Mohammed, entitled The Messenger.

Those seven years which I spent with these wandering shepherds were the most peaceful and contented years of my life.

I had already had a rich and varied experience: I was born of English parents in Paris; and lived in France for nine years. Later I was educated at Eton and at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Then I spent six years as a British army officer in India, where I played polo, and hunted, and explored in the Himalayas as well as doing some soldiering. I fought through the First World War and, at its close, I was sent to the Paris Conference as an assistant military attaché. I was shocked and disappointed at what I saw there. During the four years of slaughter on the Western Front, I had believed we were fighting to save civilisation. But at the Paris Peace Conference, I saw selfish politicians laying the groundwork for the Second World War-each country grabbing all it could for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secret diplomacy.

I was sick of war, sick of the army, sick of society. For the first time in my career, I spent sleepless nights, worrying about what I should do with my life. Lloyd George urged me to go in for politics. I was considering taking his advice when a strange thing happened, a strange thing that shaped and determined my life for the next seven years. It all came from a conversation that lasted less than two hundred seconds-a conversation with "Ted" Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", the most colourful and romantic figure produced by the First World War. He had lived in the desert with the Arabs and he advised me to do the same thing. At first, it sounded fantastic.

However, I was determined to leave the army, and I had to do something. Civilian employers did not want to hire men like me-ex-officers of the regular army-especially when the labour market was jammed with millions of unemployed. So I did as Lawrence suggested: I went to live with the Arabs. I am glad I did so. They taught me how to conquer worry. Like all faithful Moslems, they are fatalists. They believe that every word Mohammed wrote in the Koran is the divine revelation of Allah. So when the Koran says: "God created you and all your actions," they accept it literally. That is why they take life so calmly and never hurry or get into unnecessary tempers when things go wrong. They know that what is ordained is ordained; and no one but God can alter anything. However, that doesn't mean that in the face of disaster, they sit down and do nothing. To illustrate, let me tell you of a fierce, burning windstorm of the sirocco which I experienced when I was living in the Sahara. It howled and screamed for three days and nights. It was so strong, so fierce, that it blew sand from the Sahara hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean and sprinkled it over the Rhone Valley in France. The wind was so hot I felt as if the hair was being scorched off my head. My throat was parched. My eyes burned. My teeth were full of grit. I felt as if I were standing in front of a furnace in a glass factory. I was driven as near crazy as a man can be and retain his sanity. But the Arabs didn't complain. They shrugged their shoulders and said: "Mektoub!" ... "It is written."

But immediately after the storm was over, they sprang into action: they slaughtered all the lambs because they knew they would die anyway; and by slaughtering them at once, they hoped to save the mother sheep. After the lambs were slaughtered, the flocks were driven southward to water. This was all done calmly, without worry or complaining or mourning over their losses. The tribal chief said: "It is not too bad. We might have lost everything. But praise God, we have forty per cent of our sheep left to make a new start."

I remember another occasion, when we were motoring across the desert and a tyre blew out. The chauffeur had forgotten to mend the spare tyre. So there we were with only three tyres. I fussed and fumed and got excited and asked the Arabs what we were going to do. They reminded me that getting excited wouldn't help, that it only made one hotter. The blown-out tyre, they said, was the will of Allah and nothing could be done about it. So we started on, crawling along on the rim of a wheel. Presently the car spluttered and stopped. We were out of petrol 1 The chief merely remarked: "Mektoub!" and, there again, instead of shouting at the driver because he had not taken on enough petrol, everyone remained calm and we walked to our destination, singing as we went.

The seven years I spent with the Arabs convinced me that the neurotics, the insane, the drunks of America and Europe are the product of the hurried and harassed lives we live in our so-called civilisation.

As long as I lived in the Sahara, I had no worries. I found there, in the Garden of Allah, the serene contentment and physical well-being that so many of us are seeking with tenseness and despair.

Many people scoff at fatalism. Maybe they are right. Who knows? But all of us must be able to see how our fates are often determined for us. For example, if I had not spoken to Lawrence of Arabia at three minutes past noon on a hot August day in 1919, all the years that have elapsed since then would have been completely different. Looking back over my life, I can see how it has been shaped and moulded time and again by events far beyond my control. The Arabs call it mektoub, kismet-the will of Allah. Call it anything you wish. It does strange things to you. I only know that today-seventeen years after leaving the Sahara-I still maintain that happy resignation to the inevitable which I learned from the Arabs. That philosophy has done more to settle my nerves than a thousand sedatives could have achieved.

You and I are not Mohammedans: we don't want to be fatalists. But when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.

Pictures from Amman

Yahoo got around 10 pictures from Amman:
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/wl/110905ammanexplosion

Typical Jordanian... (a post by my brother Muneeb)

Fate & destiny caused my brother Muneeb to wake up today and write this e-mail... enjoy :-)
***************************8

Subject: Who are jordanians

From: "Muneeb Arrabi"

Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:46:43 +0000

I came across 2 web pages that define jordanians. I don't know if you would see what i saw in these 2 web pages. I copied them in this email.

One taken from amman stock web site, and the other taken from addustour web site.

شعار جديد لبورصة عمان بدأت بورصة عمان اعتبارا من يوم الأحد الموافق 14/8/2005 باعتماد شعاراً جديداً لها، حيث يعبّر الشعار الجديد عن رسالة البورصة بالإضافة إلى رؤياها بالتطوير الدائم والتحديث المستمر. لقد تم تصميم الشعار الجديد لبورصة عمان مع الأخذ بعين الاعتبار القيم والرسائل التالية:- • الديناميكية. • التجدد والحداثة. • التطور والتقدم. هندسة الشكل الشعار الهندسي الجديد هو عبارة عن نجمة تعبّر عن التطور والحركة الدائمة للبورصة، حيث أخذ الطابع العصري والحيوي. لون الشعار اللون الرمادي يعكس النظرة المستقبلية للبورصة والتي تساهم في تحقيق رسالتها ورؤياه اللون الأزرق يعكس الطابع المؤسسي للبورصة. الخطوط المستخدمة هي خطوط ثابتة وقوية توحي بالمصداقية والثقة. <<>

fe3lan.... As soon as i saw the slogan i figured out enno borset amman laha mesdaqeyyeh wa theqa wa laha nathra mustaqbaleyyeh thaqebah wa adraket 3assaree3 arro'ya wa attabe3 al mu'assasy lel borsa........... erhamoona ya jama3a

Why do we always have to give reasons and meanings to everything. Why can't we just say... "I like this because it's beautiful".

Not to mention the disappointment when i see jordanians in TV interviews. You feel like you are listening to a profesor be athaqafah al 3alameyyeh who won noble prizes in all fields while the interviewee has just finished setting up jarret el ghaz la baitak. And by chance, every interviewee's voice becomes harsh and deep to go along with look on his face when he's talking about ashafafeyyeh wa t'atheerha 3ala al 3awlameh

This reminds me of the famous commercial on Jordan TV ".....men tabee3ty al e3teyadeyyeh enny baheb atsallaq al jebal....."

"tabee3ety al e3teyadeyyeh" ...... come on maaaaaaaan.........

And the other thing is the following:

نتيجة التصويت

أين تفضل أن تقضي اجازاتك؟
سياحة داخلية - الاردن	(24.124 %)	1198 صوت
سياحة خارج الاردن	(39.6698 %)	1970 صوت
في البيت	(36.2062 %)	1798 صوت
من : 6/3/2005 الى :20/3/2005
المجموع الكلي #: 4966

P.S: look at the number of people who like to spend vecations at home "ya rabbi laish nehna nekdeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen"

Muneeb,