September 22, 2013

In one of the most adventurous and spontaneous decisions of my life thus far, I decided to spend a year living and working in Jerusalem for MEET, teaching computer science for change. (For a laymen’s description of MEET, check out my other post.)

July 25, 2013

In Fall 2013 I applied to be a summer instructor for MEET, an NGO who’s mission is to empower Israeli and Palestinian youth to create social, political, and economic change within the Middle East, both by giving them a network for interaction but also business and technical skills. By some strange happenstance, I was accepted to be an instructor (to teach Y2s web development, something I knew nothing about), and I agreed. Through a whirlwind of preparation, culture shock, and educational mayhem, I think I helped bring MEET one small step closer to it’s mission.

Between July 8, 2013 and July 21, 2013, I (as a member of a 5-person team), taught web programming (MVC patterns, Django, HTML, CSS, Javascript) to 60 Israeli and Palestinian high school students at the Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem for around 8 hours a day, 6 days a week.

July 22, 2013

MEET students in summer 2013 worked on 10 different projects. The code is all on Github, and the (rough) descriptions are below.

July 10, 2013

As every MIT undergrad does, I was looking for something interesting to do with my summer. I knew I was going to be graduating in June and was looking for a unique summer experience. I had already decided early in Fall 2012 (my fall semester senior year) that I would take a gap year between the end of my undergrad and the start of my MEng (Master’s in Engineering) at MIT. But I wanted to kick off my year with the right summer experience - MEET was the answer.