Arab American Institute Foundation expands US-MENA Experiential Partnership to Jordan

AMMAN — The Arab American Institute Foundation (AAIF) has announced the expansion of the US-MENA Experiential Partnership to Jordan. 

The Experiential Partnership is an initiative pioneered by AAIF, with support from the US State Department Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), according to a statement from the institute.

The partnership pairs distinguished current and former Arab American public servants and policy practitioners with officials in Jordan, for an innovative, year-long, peer learning and exchange of practices around the themes of decentralisation, participatory governance, and public private partnerships, the statement said.

The Experiential Partnership allows public servants in the Arab world to make meaningful and lasting connections with American elected officials, to visit the United States for intensive training in good governance, to attract and develop public private partnerships, and to develop and fund small policy projects to benefit their local communities, read the statement.

Elly Rostoum, the Director of the US-MENA Experiential Partnership, said: “The goal of this pioneering experiential partnership is to immerse and provide newly elected officials in the Arab world with exposure to best practices in governance that engender transparency, civic engagement and entrepreneurship. In our inaugural cohort in Tunisia, the Experiential Partnership provided $150,000 in funding for policy projects to strength constituents’ service delivery. Thanks to MEPI, we are able to concretise some transformative projects that are much needed in the municipalities we have been working with.”