Euphrates Institute

The Euphrates Institute is a not-for-profit educational organization based in the United States, whose stated mission is "to create global citizens through education, travel and community engagement."
The Euphrates Institute’s academic branch is based at Principia College, a liberal arts college for Christian Scientists in Illinois.
History
Euphrates Founder and CEO and former CIA analyst, Janessa Gans Wilder, following the US invasion of Iraq, was inspired when sitting on the banks of the Euphrates River, Iraq in 2004, marveling that such a peaceful body of water had flowed through a war-torn city just a few miles north. Inspired by the river’s communication of calm in such a violent space, Wilder decided to leave her position as part of the American war machine to found the Euphrates Institute.
According to the Eureka Wildwood Patch, “Wilder is "the real deal" as her former professor, Dr. John Glen of STLCC -Wildwood, says. Prior to her current role, Wilder was a CIA officer stationed in Iraq. During her lecture, she described working with the Marines in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq during some of the toughest moments of the war. She also described helping Iraq’s nascent political parties prepare for the nation’s first free and fair election after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Her engagement with individuals of varying viewpoints in Iraq other Arab countries helped her understand the complexities of the region, complexities which are not evident to the average U.S. citizen.”
Eureka Wildwood Patch, also sees Wilder as someone “who is using her education, her career experience and most of all, her personal values to help make the world a more peaceful place for the next generation.”
Objective
The Euphrates Institute wants to improve relations with the Middle East by engaging the moderate middle and marginalizing the extremists, in an era when they believe security, energy, and religions depend upon it. According to the Eureka Wildwood Patch, a St Louis based online blog, “the Euphrates Institute is an organization that seeks to inform U.S. citizens on the culture and politics of the Middle East. They also offer up-to-date information about the Middle East on the Euphrates Institute's website.”
The 20 percent goal is aligned to Everett Rogers’s research at Stanford, indicating that social change occurs only when a critical mass of people in that society are behind it. According to Rogers’s research, for a social change to be “embedded,” 5 % of people must be behind it. The movement or idea becomes unstoppable when 20 % of the populace is behind it.
They believe that as Einstein said and as liberals, conservatives and moderates can agree, “problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which we created them.” As a grassroots organization Euphrates believes it will be the catalyst to solving East-West problems at a different level from which they were created—beginning with individuals and communities and progressing to a society and nation that is ripe for change.
Euphrates believe they are building a critical mass of leading-edge individuals who they say recognize the need for conducting foreign relations on the same basis as personal relations according to the Golden Rule and in accord with shared interests.
Activities
Fellows program
Euphrates’ academic research and student-leadership branch, the Fellows program is the organizations college and university connection for undergraduate and graduate students seeking to learn more about the Middle East and explore international relations from the basis of the Golden Rule.
Euphrates Fellows follow the organization’s three basic principles’: inform, inspire, and transform, to view global and Middle East issues in a new light and positively impact their communities. The Euphrates Fellows program is open to undergraduate and graduate students from any college or university in the U.S.
Warriors for Peace
Seen as the Euphrates’ signature program, launched in June 2011, it is based on the premise that transforming the world requires more than just government effort; it will take citizen action and involvement. The organization sees Warriors for Peace ® as a community of next-generation thought leaders who are focused on solving global challenges. Based on the website, it appears the program may be discontinued.
Media
Euphrates uses the power of original media to bring attention to Middle East issues through print, video, online, and social networking. We aim to provide both the novice and the expert a valuable repository of information:
Weekly informative bulletins.
First-hand videos and talks from our trips and conferences.
Profiles of each country in the Middle East, & an extensive resources available.
Blogs from Fellows and staff.
Euphrates Summits
Euphrates holds capacity building conferences, recognizing an annual “Visionary of the Year” who has demonstrated the power of an individual to change the world. Its stated goal is "someone who makes the impossible, possible, and the idealistic, realistic.”
Sami Awad
Sami Awad was the Euphrates Visionary of the Year 2011. According to the Huffington Post, he “is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust (HLT), a Palestinian nonprofit organization which he founded in 1998 in Bethlehem. HLT works with the Palestinian community at both the grassroots and leadership levels in developing nonviolent approaches that aim to end the Israeli occupation and build a future founded on the principles of nonviolence, equality, justice, and peaceful coexistence.”
According to Tufts Observer “Through his journey to Auschwitz, Awad began to understand what it would mean to feel true empathy for the Israeli soldiers from whom he had long held nothing but hatred and resentment. He watched a group of Israeli teens tour the camps, listening to leaders tell them that to honor the victims of the Holocaust, they needed to be strong and protect their country. These future soldiers, Awad realizes, saw the Palestinians as the new face of anti-Semitism. To end the enmity between them, he would have to help Jews heal."
Ronny Edry
Ronny Edry, a graphic designer from Tel Aviv, Israel, was Euphrates’ Visionary of the Year 2012. Edry lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his family. In reaction to Israeli-Iranian tension, he started posting pictures on Facebook using his daughter in attempt to convey the message that Israelis were friends of the Iranians. Within 24 hours, many had shared the poster on Facebook, and Ronny started receiving messages directly from Iranians. His poster campaign started the online community Israel Loves Iran, and from the other side—groups like Iran Loves Israel, and Palestine Loves Israel. Since he started the poster campaign Edry was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Our World Beyond 9/11 Summit, held at Principia College in October 2011, brought together policy experts, social innovators, and public officials from North America and the Middle East to share their vision for a world beyond terror, division, and conflict. The key platform or the theme for the summit was Albert Einstein’s famous quote, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.”
The Observer also stated that for summit participants “the US-Middle East conflict had indeed been transformed.”

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