JEDDAH, 28 March — “It’s amazing. I could never have imagined that Jeddah was so modern, and its people so hospitable.”
This is what British student Tim Poskitt had to say yesterday when asked about how he found the city.
He was especially enamored by its historic Balad district. “The wooden ornamentation on the sides of these houses is amazing,” he continued.
A guide explained that the wooden ornamentation was designed to let in the sea breezes but at the same time shield residents, especially females, from the eyes of passersby.
The visit Tim and other British students from in the north of England are on is part of the British Council’s “Connecting Futures” initiative, aimed at building deeper mutual understanding between young people from different cultural backgrounds both in the UK and overseas.
“The initiative initially is focused on priority countries in the Islamic world and involves the UK’s own large Muslim community,” Allen Swales, British Council director for the Western Province, told Arab News.
On Tuesday at the British Council here the visitors met with a number of young Saudi students for a discussion session on a range of problems and issues. Both Saudi and UK students worked together to issue the following statement:
“We all have things about us which are common, such as an interest in sport, and we also have differences. The best way to communicate these is to talk face to face, without the propaganda of the media. Whatever religion we follow it should be a means of bringing us together, not dividing us.”
As some students were touring the old city, the Muslim members of the group were in Makkah to perform Umrah and then in Madinah to pray at the Prophet’s Mosque.
Other parts of this ambitious program include linking three million young people a year in more than 1,000 new school links and youth exchange sports projects.
