Kamal Oudrhiri Helps Promote Space Education, Cultural Celebration
By Carrie Loewenthal Massey - Special Correspondent, State Department Washington
"My story is somewhat unusual because since a very early age I was always mesmerized by the stars and the vastness of the universe," Kamal Oudrhiri reminisced.
Perhaps more unusual than Oudrhiri's fascination with outer space, however, is his gumption to follow his dreams: to work with the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and now, to help other children realize their dreams, as well as to build in his community an understanding of Moroccan and American cultural commonalities.
Oudrhiri's tale is one of adventure and daring, a young man of 18 who traveled from his home in Morocco to Los Angeles with only a secondary school diploma to his name.
"I didn't speak a single word of English and I didn't know anyone," Oudrhiri said. "I barely had enough money to last me a couple of months. Los Angeles seemed so far away from Morocco, and in the late 1980s there was no Internet, no satellite TV, and the cost to call my family in Morocco with AT&T was about $5 per minute. I was practically a world away."
Oudrhiri quickly forged a path for himself, never turning his back on his dreams and never returning home to live. Now a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles, Oudrhiri not only contributes his knowledge to the space program, but also donates his time, creativity and passion to the two nonprofit organizations he established in pursuit of the other missions close to his heart.
Kamal points at the antenna of the full-size mockup of the Mars Exploration Rover at NASA/JPL.
GROVE OF HOPE
In 2003, Oudrhiri founded the organization Grove of Hope with two objectives. First, he wanted to increase African classroom teachers' awareness of and accessibility to NASA's teaching resources.
"NASA spends millions of dollars developing education materials for teachers and they're free. Schools in the U.S. and Europe use them, but in Africa teachers, didn't know how to access and use them," Oudrhiri said.
Grove of Hope organizes events like Science Week Morocco 2009. NASA and university-affiliated volunteers led three days of workshops that introduced Moroccan teachers to an array of innovative science lessons they could bring into their classrooms. Oudrhiri witnessed the positive impact such lessons can have on students' curiosity for and ability to explore space mysteries as Moroccan schoolchildren participated in interactive lab activities that Grove of Hope furnished for the event.
"I cannot separate the work we do at NASA from what excites children all over the world. You have to see their eyes and their big smiles when space is involved," Oudrhiri said.
For more on Science Week Morocco 2009, see "NASA Enhances Space Expertise Through Middle East Alliances ( http://www.america.gov/st/scitech-english/2010/February/20100216152157kcsniggih0.849209.html )."
Grove of Hope has also worked with teachers from Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mauritania, and has plans to collaborate in Ghana and Cameroon. To continue to expand its reach, the organization next plans to create a science center in Casablanca to which teachers from other African countries could travel for training. Oudrhiri explained that the location of such a center in Morocco would ease logistical and financial burdens of travel for American volunteers carrying supplies to various African countries, while positioning resources in an accessible place for African participants. Grove of Hope's intent is to reach as many teachers and students as possible.
"We want to truly help the next generation in Africa. To do that we have to get them excited and inspired about science and technology so they can manage resources better and understand changes in their environment," Oudrhiri said.
Along with its work in Africa, Grove of Hope strives to meet its other objective of bringing a zeal for and understanding of science to American students. The organization helps inner-city Los Angeles schools obtain funding for science and technology programs, and wants to begin training teachers.
Grove of Hope gets all its money through fundraising initiatives. Oudrhiri and his partners try to tap into their personal interests, like music and athletics, to organize concerts and other events that bring the Los Angeles community together. Years of running and training others for marathons led Oudrhiri to pioneer a major fundraiser: the City of Angels Half Marathon. The half marathon continues to grow in popularity, and Grove of Hope donates all proceeds to Los Angeles schools.
CELEBRATING CULTURAL SIMILARITIES
Just as Grove of Hope supports education in both Africa and the United States, so too does Oudrhiri's other organization, the Moroccan American Cultural Center of Los Angeles (MACCLA), aim to benefit the people of both Morocco and the United States by celebrating cultural similarities.
"MACCLA is for people who are interested in the fusion between Morocco and the United States. We have a lot of common history and I'm more interested in bringing the commonalities to people," Oudrhiri said.
Oudrhiri's perception of the cultural aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks drove him to found MACCLA in 2005.
"After 9/11 people started focusing on how the people in Muslim countries are so different than people in the West, and I felt, no, let's refocus on what we have in common. MACCLA is not Morocco; it's not America; it's what brings both of them together," he said.
The organization uses academic, music and art programming to demonstrate these cultural commonalities to the public. For example, in 2009, MACCLA collaborated with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) African Studies Center to send 15 elementary school teachers to Morocco for five weeks.
The teachers spent each week in a different region of the country to give them a broad exposure to the many intricacies of Moroccan culture, language and history. Upon their return, the teachers had to implement in their classrooms lessons based from their travel experiences. A grant from the Fulbright Program, an international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. State Department, provided funding for the trip.
In 2008, Oudrhiri produced and was the artistic director for MACCLA's musical and dance production Fez: Queen of Cities. The performance celebrated the 1,200th anniversary of the city of Fez, home to the oldest university in the world and the spiritual and religious center of Morocco, according to MACCLA. The show highlighted the active role women played in the city's society, even 1,000 years ago. Musicians from Europe, Asia and Africa partnered with contemporary dancers from Los Angeles to stage the production on a tour of cities that included Geneva, Los Angeles, New York, Rabat, Paris and Barcelona.
Oudrhiri felt most anxious about taking the show to Rabat and a home audience.
"It was a little nerve-wracking for me because you are there and trying to tell them their history and then it's performed by Americans, so you're always nervous about how it will be perceived. But we got amazing reviews from the Moroccan crowd," he said.
MACCLA next plans to partner with the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies to film a short piece for the "Moroccan Tutor" program, an online instructional tool that teaches Moroccan Arabic to American middle and secondary school students. A young Moroccan-American boy and girl will tape 12 language lessons.
His contribution to "Moroccan Tutor" in effect brings Oudrhiri's journey full circle. When he first set foot on Los Angeles's Pacific shores at 18 years old, unable to speak English, "the sound of the ocean waves was the only sound that brought happiness to my heart" because it "reminded me of those moments with my family along the Atlantic Ocean near Casablanca," Oudrhiri said. Now fluent in English, and well-versed in American culture, Oudrhiri's contributions to language and science education, as well as cultural exchange, enrich the lives of people in both of his homes. Programs like "Moroccan Tutor" may just give young Americans with dreams of working in Africa the tools they need to succeed across vast oceans.
(Source: Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
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