Our final ‪#‎IVLP‬ Gold Star of 2015 arrived earlier this month for his ‪#‎ExchangeAlumni‬ tour! On Said El Kaoukaji’s 2004 IVLP, he told a Nebraskan newspaper, The Grand Island Independent, “What I want is to bridge that gap between my students and students in the United States."

El Kaoukaji is a high school teacher in the Sidi Moumen district of Casablanca, Morocco. The 2003 suicide bombing attacks in Casablanca deeply touched this district, and afterward El Kaoukaji worked with the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Mission to Morocco and a local American Language Center to organize free English classes for a select group of 17 disadvantaged youth.

This Casablanca initiative grew into the English Access Microscholarship Program, becoming a global phenomenon with Access programs in 90 countries around the world. One of the largest Access programs is in Morocco, where approximately 2000 students attend Access English classes each year. El Kaoukaji is an accomplished teacher and mentor who is committed to helping vulnerable youth improve their future through developing English acquisition, critical thinking skills and civic engagement. 

A blog post written by Ms. Gita Harie as a reflection on her 2015 IVLP Gold Star Program.

THE YEAR OF CELEBRATIONS!   BUILDING COMMUNITIES TOGETHER – FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA

“At Durban and Coastal Mental Health, we are celebrating a historical milestone of 75 years of service excellence to persons with mental disabilities.  I feel privileged that I am the first South African to be selected for the 2015 Gold Star Project as part of your IVLP 75th Anniversary Celebrations.  Through this incredible opportunity that has been afforded to me as an Alumni, the United States Government is contributing to building communities in South Africa. 

I gained an abundance of knowledge and skills on mental health services in America from the dialogue and interactions that I had with various roleplayers and I am inspired to implement the best practice models in South Africa that have been shared with me on this program.

The highlights of the Gold Star Project for me were:

·      The recognition of the importance of self-worth for a person with disabilities and I experienced this fundamental recognition throughout the project.

My profound Coffee Shop Meeting with a consumer, Sasha who founded an NGO called “IQRAS”. Sasha challenged me on the language of recovery and traditional psychiatric interventions and got me thinking about psychiatry from a different perspective.

The powerful use of Art, Puppets and Drama as forms of therapy and tools to educate people about disabilities.  

A blog written by Walter Nunn, programmer who hosted Frederic Callens in Little Rock during both of his IVLP visits.

Mr. Frederic Callens, Director of Anti-Discrimination in France, who reports directly to the French Prime Minister, was chosen as a rare repeat visitor in the IVLP Gold Star program after coming to the U.S. in 2008. Following his earlier visit, he rose rapidly to his current national position with a concentration on minority issues. He moved from Toulouse to Paris upon his promotion.

Little Rock is the only city on his current tour that he also visited in 2008, and he was interested in comparing the status of minority issues today. His itinerary also included Washington, D.C., Phoenix and New York, so Little Rock is the smallest and in some respects the most representative stop. His local programmer, Dr. Walter Nunn, wrote and carried out his program both times.

Arrival  -- I met Frederic at the airport, and I immediately realized that the first time he came, he required an interpreter, but now he speaks English well enough to converse without one. I’m sure the southern accent makes this task harder, but he’s too polite to admit it. Fred, as he prefers to be called, has a home stay with Dr. Francine Bruyneel, a pediatrician, and Patrick Mathieu, a Skippy Peanut Butter retiree, a jolly native French-speaking couple from Belgium and France, respectively. They are long-time Little Rock residents.

Day 1

His one repeat appointment is today, at Little Rock Central High School, site of the famous 1957 integration crisis. Nancy Rousseau, the principal, recalled his 2008 visit. Today he met with a second-year French class in an open-ended q & a session with the students, predominantly African American. They were interested to find out that the primary minority issue in France was the integration of immigrants and their descendants, mostly second- and third generation Muslims from Africa and more recently, from eastern Europe, such as Romania. He discovered that the racial ratio of 60-40 black-white at the school is essentially the same as his previous visit. A few adventurous students posed their questions in French, which Fred commended for their effort.

A photographer from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and a reporter from a local t.v. station covered this classroom discussion. The newspaper carried a photo of his speaking to the class.

This week is Diversity Week at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and this afternoon focused on Native American culture. The head of the Quapaw tribe brought a group of students from Oklahoma who talked about growing up in a mixed culture and pulled audience members into a demonstration of a few of their dances and the symbolism. The Quapaws greeted the white explorers who came to the Little Rock area. Mr. Callens, thoughtful and a little shy, didn’t volunteer to dance but enjoyed his first encounter with American Indian youths and saw some similarity with the Muslim-white adjustments in France. Fred also visited the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University, which is an extensive collection of Native American literature, publications, history and artifacts.

Local Hospitality –He had home hospitality tonight with Kathleen Madden, a staff member, who crammed 12 people into her small apartment with a wide range of ethnicities, religions, races and sexual preferences.

Day 2

Today is a reminder that visitors often have to monitor their work back home. I found out that as soon as he left the country, Prime Minister Manuel Valls has scheduled his first speech on the subject of discrimination to be delivered the day Fred leaves Little Rock. Fred obviously has a lot of input on this event, and about this time he has started pecking furiously on his phone between appointments and, I discovered, late into the night.

Sophia Said of Interfaith Dialogue and Education is a native Pakistani and Muslim whose work is most closely related to Fred’s situation of whites and largely Muslim immigrants back home. Sophia told a touching story of her not wearing a chador (head scarf) most of her 20 years in the U.S. and then deciding she didn’t have give up this highly visible symbol of her faith. Her husband, a medical school physician, became embarrassed about her going to the staff Christmas party. The result was a “teachable moment” symbolic of Sophia’s work in bridging the gap between Christians and Muslims in Little Rock. The conversation between Fred and Sophia on this subject was perhaps the most moving one of the Little Rock visit.

The Family Council is a conservative advocate of Christian values, including pro-life and traditional heterosexual marriage. It’s the most vigorous Arkansas lobbying organization in favor of religious freedom legislation that, along with Indiana, received national attention recently to the Arkansas General Assembly. Fred’s style is to listen and ask a few questions rather than challenge or serve as a devil’s advocate, although he was once a journalist. He’s definitely laid back but is taking in everything.

Lunch is with Loretta Alexander, an African American career health care administrator and researcher who is also the senior member of Global Ties Arkansas. We ate at Dave’s Country Kitchen.

We had a break until the next appointment, so we went to Starbucks so Fred could write some more on the PM’s speech. Fantastically perfect weather for sitting outside sipping coffee and watching Fred writing intensely.

Met the Mayor, Mark Stodola, who weighed in on the religious freedom issue a few days ago and was on the Rachel Maddow Show advocating that individual cities should be allowed to ban discrimination against gays.

Met the state’s leading civil rights attorney, John Walker, who has successfully sued schools and employers to eliminate racial discrimination. That was immediately followed by the organization of a community group to protest the state’s takeover of the Little Rock School District because six of the 48 schools have found to be below the state’s required level of academic proficiency. The meeting is in John’s office, and 18 people, predominantly African American, agree to protest the takeover by picketing the state Board of Education majority that narrowly approved this highly controversial action. My family members are joining the protest, and this is the first time I’ve ever had a chance to take a visitor to the formation of community action group. It’s a programming milestone and an unusual opportunity for a visitor to see democracy in action this close.

Whew!  This has been a full day. Instead of going to a local pub with his host family, Fred is exhausted and has more writing to do, so he goes home. And so do I.

Day 3

In the morning, Fred meets with the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, which is on the other side from the Arkansas Family Council on the religious freedom issue. Then he goes to the Clinton Presidential Center to discuss potential international internships from the Clinton School of Public Service, which has the country’s only master’s degree in public service. The Clinton School in turn accepts graduate student applications from overseas, so this meeting is a joint opportunity.

Fred’s program concluded with an interesting interview with the new (10 months) Police Chief Kenton Buckner on the subject of police violence in the wake of Ferguson and other widely publicized police killings. Chief Buckner is an African American from Louisville and has an  aggressive program to prevent police killings of civilians: the patrolmen are being trained by a nonprofit race relations group on appropriate responses to provocations and tense situations, body cameras will be put on all patrolmen, the Chief goes to a different black church every Sunday, he encourages and accepts all the speaking engagements he can, and he has an open door to any citizen with a complaint. Fred and I both find this an amazingly proactive approach to improving police-citizen relations. Fred has taken the most copious notes of any appointment.

Farewell dinner at Francine and Patrick’s house that includes me, Global Ties Arkansas director Toni Carr and husband Jim, which is preceded by a brief but intense discussion with state Senator Joyce Elliott, the only black woman in the Arkansas Senate, about Arkansas race relations. The dinner is highlighted by several rounds of toasts to Fred, the PM’s impending speech, and improved relations with minorities in both countries,  

Diplomacy, Diversity, & Detroit An interview with Mr. Frédéric Callens, 2015 IVLP Gold Star Article written by community-based member in Detroit

“After participating in a  very powerful professional exchange experience in the U.S. in 2008, IVLP Gold Member Frédéric Callens, the Anti-Discrimination director of France, returned to the U.S. for another IVLP study of Diversity & Youth Engagement.

Callens’ recent visit to the U.S. included stops in Washington, DC, New York, Little Rock, Arkansas and Phoenix, Arizona, where he examined issues of racial and religious discrimination, regionally and with an eye to the status nationally. His tour ended in Detroit, Michigan and included a meeting with HYPE Athletics to learn how the community organization promotes civic awareness and leadership to youth via athletics and social services.  Together with his local volunteer liaison Harriet Saperstein, a community leader and IVC Detroit supporter, Callens also visited the Detroit Institute of Arts to get a sense of Detroit’s cultural history, and then toured the city of Detroit through a 1 mile, 1-hour tour along Woodward Avenue, the first paved road in the nation and the central street in Detroit.

The highlight of the visit was Mr. Callens’ participation at the Global Ties US Diplomacy Begins Here Summit: Detroit! He was able to observe local and national efforts in advocating for diversity and inter-cultural relations. He had the opportunity to speak on his experiences and further establish a forum for cultural exchange by equipping the audience with a more informed perspective of modern-day France.

We live in a fast-paced global society where mindsets are challenged and shifted, events spark new discussions, and fear can be a great destabilizer and alienator among a people. Since his previous trip to America, those significant factors underscore the need to constantly re-examine and develop relations and understanding between nations and communities. Mr. Callens’ recent program highlighted this strengthening of ties and learning from one another, especially when dealing with xenophobia and prejudice in both in United States and France following the events of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris.

The following exchange with Mr. Callens at the Detroit Summit explores the French delegate’s viewpoint on these critical points and how to share best practices in resolving contested international issues while preventing further unrest domestically.

Cain: Since the terrorist attacks have occurred, how has the nation responded?

Callens: It was a trauma for two reasons. First, because they kill[ed] the journalist. And the second reason is because the terrorists were born in France. It's the first time [that terrorist acts have been committed by French citizens]. So, you can imagine the trauma of terrorist attacks against French journalists. Before, the terrorists came from Algeria, Iraq [etc.,] but for the first time, the terrorist attack was done by French people. We have an emergency to answer this question. But this question needs time. We live with a third generation of immigration in France. All the people are French. They are born French. They go to French schools. So you can imagine the gap that we have between how we want to show the world about French modernity and French values; but the young people are passionate and don't want to wait right now.

Cain: Has this caused a rise in xenophobic behavior?

Callens: We have not had a tradition of fighting racial discrimination. The programs in France are for all and not about specific communities. In the U.S., you have like Afro-American, Muslim-American, Latinos, but when we employ public policy, it's public policy for all. But it's been two years since the public attack in January, we are seeking to improve public policy dealing with fighting with racial discrimination. But it's a new question in France. The situation is complicated in France. We have very important immigrants. We are the first country of immigration in Europe. There is a struggle with war and there is a resonance between the struggle with the Arab countries. And now we have second and third generation in France, and they have more justice.

Cain: While working with the prime minister and taking in a lot of different perspectives, do you feel as if you're able to have a palpable influence through him? And how is your relationship with him?

Callens: I think that we have the best prime minister in France. For the first time in our country, the prime minister recognizes that there is something wrong in the neighborhoods. However, the more you go local, the more you meet opposition to change. The politicians don't want to lose power, so it's a fight! You have to respect some points of view and you have to fight some points of view, but it's very necessary! So this is a very important issue that we have in France.

Cain: What experiences have you encountered here in the U.S. that you feel you can bring back to France?

Callens: One thing that is interesting to me is how you involve the population before you take political action. There's a lot of community organizing and community service. France is a very central state. All of it is top-down. So we have to inverse how we approach these issues. We have to do more listening to the people: to be more understanding of their wants, and who they want. So I think that the most interesting thing that I've seen in the U.S. is that the they want to trust in their population. In France, we trust in the state. I think that when I go back to work on public policy in France I will try to ask the people what they want, and how they want, so that we will take care about their concerns when we employ public policy.

Our interview concluded with Callens preparing for his panel session entitled Conflict Resolution at Home and Abroad, where he will spoke on strategies that promote mutual understanding and cooperation in our local communities as well as in an increasingly complex world. I look forward to following Callens’ socio-political efforts in helping reunite France as a nation that has historically prided itself on the national motto: “liberty, equality, and fraternity”.

Authors: Rio Cain graduated from the University of Michigan in May, 2015, majoring in International Relations.  From January through April 2015, Rio served as an intern at the International Visitors Council of Detroit (IVC Detroit) through the University of Michigan’s Semester in Detroit Program.  He attending the Global Ties US National Meeting through the Emerging Leader Program in February, 2015 and took part in the outreach and planning for the Diplomacy Begins Here Summit Detroit!

Blog written by Dr. Tony Zipple, CEO of Seven Counties Services.

“I was honored recently to visit with Ms. Gita Harie from South Africa; it was a real pleasure to exchange ideas with her. Gita’s organization and mine have many things in common. We offer a number of similar services, we share common values about community integration and the dignity of the clients whom we serve, and we both struggle to do the most and the best work possible given the funding limitations that we have.

My impression is that mental health services in South Africa are evolving rapidly and that many of the lessons learned from related work in the United States are applicable. For example, some program approaches like congregate residential services, sheltered workshops, and affirmative business that have been widely used in the States are now being discontinued; this is because we continue to witness the potential of people with even the most severe illnesses to do well in an integrated setting. I hope that our hard won knowledge in areas like these can help Gita skip over some of our well-intentioned but less successful efforts.

On the other hand, I was very impressed by Gita’s description of their arts based programs and their success in managing services for a culturally and geographically diverse population. I could imagine the vitality and excitement in her organization as I listened to her descriptions and saw photos of events.  I hope that we stay in touch and continue to exchange ideas.  It sounds like an extraordinary place and, given the shrinking size of our planet, perhaps I will have an opportunity to visit one day.

2015 IVLP Gold Star, Gita Harie’s final meeting was with Vitalis Lanshima, who is an educator, social entrepreneur and former Paralympian who relocated to Louisville from Nigeria. Vitalis inspired Gita to take “Your Potential - Our Passion” to greater heights.  Gita comments, “what an amazing journey of learning and sharing knowledge on this IVLP Gold Star Tour”.