The Understanding Campaign Wants You

How hard can it be to learn just one word of Arabic? The Understanding Campaign encourages you to become familiar with the word Fhm (fuh-hem’), which literally means understanding. By joining the campaign, you are saying you support empathy and understanding over conflict.

Haneen Alshujairy and Justin Sirois began collaborating on a novel and a book of short stories in late 2007, working entirely over email. After completing both literary projects, they decided to start a more culturally overt campaign to get everyone in the world to read just one word of Arabic. It is a gesture of goodwill between Western and Arab cultures.

The Understanding Campaign is growing into an international nonprofit organization promoting literary projects between the English and Arab worlds. Our nonpartisan initiative seeks to open dialogue through establishing a book donation program where publishers and individuals can easily send books to the Iraqi National Library and Iraqi University libraries.

Want to understand more? Visit http://understandingcampaign.org.