About us

Let’s Read in Arabic!

هيا نقرأ بالعربية!

Vision

To foster the passion of reading in Arabic to create a deeper understanding, respect and appreciation of the Arabic culture and language.

الرؤيا

تعزيز شغف القراءة باللغة العربية لبناء أجيال واعية ومنفتحة ولدعم إرتقاء في التفكير واحترام وتقدير وفهم أعمق للثقافة واللغة والهوية والتراث العربي

Mission statement

AlDaad is an initiative by the Center for Languages, Arts, & Societies of the Silk Road (CLASSRoad). We affirm the importance of reading for language development and acquisition and the universal right to education. Our aim is to facilitate access to quality Arabic books and foster the passion to read in every student by using current classroom technologies. Our initiative eases the access to books and assesses reading comprehension, all while reducing the burden on teachers. We tailor to native speakers and to those who are learning Arabic as a second language, both in Arab countries and abroad.

 الهدف من المبادرة

مشروع الضّاد مبادرة من مركز لغات وفنون ومجتمعات طريق الحرير .إننا نؤمن أن اكتساب المعرفة هو حق للجميع ونشدد على أهمية وضرورة تنمية القرائية لتطوير فهم واستيعاب اللغة وثقافتها والتواصل من خلالها. هدفنا تيسير وسيلة الحصول على الكتب ذات المستوى الراقي  ونشر حب المطالعة لجميع الطلبة عبر استخدام أحدث وأنسب تقنيات التعليم. مبادرتنا تسهّل الحصول على الكتب وتقيّم قدرة التلميذ على الفهم وتخفّف عبء العمل على المعلم وتدعم الأبحاث للتّأكد من النتائج المرجوة. برنامجنا موجّه للناطقين بالعربية وبغيرها في الدول العربية وسائر دول العالم

Mohammed Aleem, Operations

محمد عبد العليم، المدير التنفيذي

Aleem is the Executive Director and the co-founder of HADI. He oversees the operations of CLASSRoad. He has extensive experience in Information Technology and has worked with Fortune 100 companies in the area of Management Information Systems. He holds an MBA with a specialization in Management Information Systems from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Dany Doueiri, Academic Director

الدكتور داني الدويري، مدير الشؤون الأكاديمية

Amr Saemaldahr, CTO

عمرو صائم الدهر، مدير قسم التكنولوجيا

Amr serves as the Chief Technology Officer at HADI. He has a wide range of experience in information technology. He served as MIS Director for AuctionX, one of the first online auction sites and Tredex, a wholesale computer re-seller. Earlier, he held positions with a commercial bank. He holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lyon, France (ICPI). Amr also serves as the Technology Director for the HADI online education program.

Rami Doueiri, Ph.D. Project Director

الدكتور رامي الدويري، مدير المشروع

Dr. Doueiri is responsible for the AlDaad project aiming to improve Arabic reading. He received his Masters degree in cancer biology, then his PhD in virology from the Ohio State University, and did a postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest biomedical research center in the world, working on HIV vaccines. He has a special interest in technology transfer and interned as a consultant for a national lab project. He recently switched to educational management with the purpose to transfer and spread the use of educational technologies. In addition, he is interested in creating online classes in Arabic and other languages to facilitate understanding science and reduce scientific misconception within the public.

Mahbuba Hammad M.P.H., Ph.C., Research Director

الاستاذة محبوبة حماد، مديرة الأبحاث الأكاديمية

Professor Mahbuba Hammad has been part of the CLASSRoad staff since 2011. Her research has focused on advancing students’ Arabic literacy skills and motivation to read by investigating leveling and readability approaches to reading and how they are affected by vocabulary acquisition, phonology and other Arabic language specific factors. She has worked on many aspects of the teacher training programs at CLASSRoad including conducting teacher training across all of the Arabic language councils in the U.S, She holds several certificates with the last being the “Quality Matters” Certificate. She also led the research team in vetting, abstracting, categorizing and evaluating more than 3,000 institutional and online resources to assist Arabic Language teachers in the Al-Masdar site, a special program funded by Qatar Foundation International. She is also an instructional faculty member teaching Arabic language and content-based courses in the World Languages and Literatures Department at California State University, San Bernardino. She has extensive experience in Summer Language Programs under many capacities in instruction, teacher and tutor training and program administration..

Adji Sudarmadji, Computer Systems

أدجي سودرمدجي، معلوماتية

Adji manages the organization’s computer systems, which includes keeping the network up to date and running smoothly. He has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Diponegoro University, Indonesia.

CLASSRoad has been creating community-facing portal of resources and has considerable experience in the design, development and maintenance of large web-based resource portals. We have been offering professional development STARTALK courses since 2007 and have been awarded over $1 million in cumulative program funds. STARTALK is a U.S. federal initiative to support national capacity of students and teachers of critical languages such as Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Chinese, and so on. Our professional development courses focus on Arabic teaching, using classroom digital technology, and online education toolkits (Our classes). To develop our teaching materials we partnered with many professors in the U.S. that have a combined experience of more than 100 years in education and teaching such as Dr Mohammad Issa, Dr Hanada Taha, Dr Dany Doueiri , Dr Bobby Hobgood , Munir Sheikh, Dr Mona Al Manee, Dr Salah Ayari, Dr Kirk Belnap and Dr Michael Cooperson. Our teaching materials have been used by several institutions in the USA (Aldeen Foundation, Middle East Institute, Brigham Young University), Canada (Rahama school), UAE  (American Community School of Abu Dhabi) and Bahrain (Arabi21, Bahrain Teacher College), and a thousand teachers, instructors and administrators benefited from our classes. In 2012, with funding from Qatar Foundation International (QFI), a U.S. based non-profit organisation, with a mission to advance understanding of Arabic language and culture, CLASSRoad built Al-Masdar, a portal of resources for teachers of Arabic language and culture. In 2014, CLASSRoad developed LangCred, a STARTALK infrastructure project, to provide needed information for teachers interested in pursuing a teaching credential for critically needed languages in the USA. In 2017 CLASSRoad received an infrastructure grant to assist teachers develop online lesson plans. In addition, we developed educational ebooks to support Arabic language learning. “Let’s Explore Arabic Alphabet” iBook has been featured by Apple iBooks due to its technological content.