School: Bibliotheca Alexandrina
    Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt

2 students, ages 16 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on March 11, 2010. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s): 2009

Classes and Teachers: Eiman El-Wazzan, Muhammad Hegazy. Bahaa, Aladdin

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.bibalex.org/Libraries/youngpeople

1. Description of Our Team

We are two students from different schools working under the instruction of Young people’s Library, Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Our names are: Bahaa (16 years old) and Aladdin (16 years old). We all joined together to do this project because we really believe in the importance of Peace for the whole world. We also believe in youth participation in such significant projects through which we can make a good step forward in promoting World Peace. The tasks were distributed as the following: Aladdin worked in the process of information gathering, Bahaa worked as a programmer. We both participated and shared ideas about the website's design. Mrs. Sherine is the head of youngpeople’s library; Ms. Eiman was organizing tasks among the group, shared some ideas about designing website, and teaches us how to collect information from different sources and Mr. Mohamed revised text and give the group ideas for better information gathering.

2. Summary of Our Project

It's about the World Peace. We talked about the relation between peace and democracy, the problems and obstacles that hurdle the process of achieving World Peace, the importance of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the United Nations, and community leaders like Nobel Peace laureates who devoted their lives serving their beliefs of giving people and the world a peaceful life . Also, we talked about Egypt, and its leading role in Africa and spreading peace and democracy. The important thing that we would like to illustrate is our vision about peace and democracy which is all religions call for world peace; they consider promoting world peace as faith in god, and it is not impossible to live in peace.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:2-3

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:not sure

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

It takes time to get things done on our web project and it also required that we study for our academic education; managing time for both was a bit of a problem.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

We strongly believe that it is not impossible, for the whole world, to live in peace. We were inspired by the immortal figures who devoted their lives for giving peaceful life to their community and tried to spread their words of peace.

6. How did your activities and research for this Doors to Diplomacy Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

We wanted to give some more clarification about the relation between peace and democracy, their significance in our lives, and the relation between both of them and we hope that we’re playing a role in spreading words of peace, giving our community the opportunity to read and know more about some role models that changed the lives of others, role models that we should look up to. We all learned what it means to work in a team and the skills needed for it, and we also learned some techniques about the internet usage and how to find information on the web. And now we can say that teamwork helped us to cohere together and be productive by giving ourselves the time to think of things, imagine them and acquire new information that will give us some more clarification to understand things better, this is how we understand specific ideas. Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the embassy of knowledge in Alexandria and Egypt, wanted to spot the light on the peace process, a small role that our organization can play in our community. For our discoveries about our education system we may say that working on a project like this website is something totally different from working on our school subjects, in school they test how much you can acquire information and put them into the answer sheet, but when it comes to something like this website we saw new things, researches have been done, in different words you need to be creative to work on something like this. And for the skills we can say that critical thinking and creative thinking are two skills that have been improved during the process of building our web project.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your Doors to Diplomacy project?

All the tools played a significant role in the two processes of gathering information and designing our web site. Personal computer at home, and workstations, books and scanners at the library. Bibliotheca Alexandrina secured some tools for us like some online databases that are only accessible inside the library, YP activity room, two computers to work on, and all that we needed to get our work done. Software used for designing : (Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 - Microsoft Expression web - Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Swish Max 2 - pro 5 - PHP Coder 3 - Notepad - Microsoft Office - CuteFTP 8 Professional.) We used computer most of the time because internet and databases are the easier way for us to find information we want. We also used some books taking advantage of its authentic and reliable information. Despite the numerous and everyday use of the computers but we can say that books were our most valuable tool for their genuineness. We used scanners to scan some books and print them to take them home.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your Doors to Diplomacy project both on-line and in person.

Now and after finishing this project we knew enough information about peace and all the related issues, we can talk about peacemakers and the outstanding Nobel peace laureates and when it comes to peace; we can think differently and act differently. As the team members were from different schools, they started to discuss the idea of the project with their class mates, and they started to search for information about the subject. Our parents were full of enthusiasm, they tried to help their us in gathering information from specialists in the field like journalists.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

Our project will make a difference only if we can think, believe, and act like one of the persons we spotted the light on, the peacemakers, in the website and we hope when the website is published, people will understand the relationship between peace and democracy, and actively participate even as individuals in achieving peace. Because we believe in the role of our community in the region and even in the continent, we do spotted the light on Egypt's role in promoting World Peace, and one of its leaders, the Nobel peace laureate the president El-Sadat, so we hope that they will learn new things about Egypt. We talked with some school colleagues and friends who liked the idea and their feedback were pretty good and even better from our teachers in our schools.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

Our helpers were all from the Library. Their help was in giving us the directions where to go and what to use among the huge number of resources that we can get information from. They were Mrs. Eiman and Mr. Mohamed. We’re really thankful for them and their efforts are more than appreciated.. Other people who helped us are those who published articles about peace on the internet because we used some of these articles as references and even inspired by their words.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Our surprise was how can anyone spend twenty seven years in prison, as a political prisoner, and he still have the will, the belief, and the hope for a better future. We were astonished how strong Mandela was.