I love technology. Every day it puts me in touch with colleagues and friends from around the world. Firing up Skype means being able to connect from Washington to people as far flung as Kabul, Sulaimaniyah, and Phnom Penh.

Erik has been able to send me photos that I’ve posted on Flickr and anecdotes from the hike with Skype. He’s been able to email short notes and quotes from the young hikers, like Kastro who kept thanking EPIC and our Iraqi partners Nature Iraq and Metrography for the opportunity to take part in the Hike. It’s was an experience he otherwise would have never had.

And just yesterday, Facebook enabled us here at EPIC to get a very nice surprise. (Have you “Liked” us on Facebook, yet? I promise, it’s painless!) Ahmed, one of the participants in our Iraqi Youth Hike, posted a picture of himself and EPIC Executive Director Erik Gustafson on the hike through Kani Shok.

EPIC Executive Director Erik and Iraqi Youth Hiker Ahmed

Ahmed thanked EPIC for organizing the peacebuilding program saying, “I will not forget these times.” He called the experience wonderful and said he told all of his friends and family in Kirkuk about it.

But Ahmed hasn’t told only them, with Facebook and other technology, young Iraqis can tell their friends in Baghdad and Michigan about the great time they had. And, more importantly to EPIC, platforms like Facebook allow the hikers to stay in touch with us and with each other long after the program ends. Building understanding and friendship between different communities won’t end in Kani Shok, it will continue in Kirkuk and also here in the ones and zeros that make up the words, pictures, and videos we share with technology every day.

Most of us have been there: sitting in the living room with screws and bolts strewn around us, particle board leaning at odd angles. We were so optimistic when we saw the shelving unit on the display floor at IKEA, but we’ve got a challenge ahead of us. At least the wordless instruction manual assures us these pieces will all fit together into a sturdy stand for our old textbooks, our new tomes, and the DVD sets we’re maybe a little embarrassed about. (Less the “Battlestar: Galactica”, more the “Supernatural”.)

Our Iraqi Youth Hikers model our awesome t-shirt with EPIC Executive Director Erik Gustafson (middle)

But in the end, all the hard work is worth it. We have a bookshelf we built with our own two hands (at a good price, too) and building it ourselves just feels good. It’s called the IKEA Effect, the tendency of people to place more value into something they’ve built themselves.

That’s why I think we’re all so excited here at EPIC about the Iraqi Youth Hike. This weekend, the young Iraqis taking part in our program met, got to know each other, and learned about the challenges ahead of them on the Hike and what they’re expected to get out of it. Next, they’ll learn about the natural environment around them and begin to document their world through photography.

The Iraqi Youth Hike is our first project on the ground in Iraq. Early on, it was just disparate bits and pieces of ideas and then–because over 130 people helped us build it with their generous donations–together we turned the Hike into a reality. We each had a hand in making the Hike what it is and we’ll each have a hand in ensuring it’s a sturdy success.

An Expedit bookshelf. They excite me so much I have two.

You can still contribute to making the Hike (and future hikes!) as exciting as an Expedit just by spreading the word about EPIC on Facebook and Twitter, making a donation, or buying a t-shirt.

Just like the bookshelf, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you helped build the Hike that’s right now empowering young Iraqis with the skills to be the future leaders of Iraq.

I know I feel that satisfaction when I see the photos and hear the stories coming out of the Iraqi Youth Hike. I know we couldn’t have built it without you. Thank you for helping all of us at EPIC give young Iraqis the tools they too will need to build a more peaceful and prosperous future.

Thanks to @cblatts and @markwbaur for the IKEA Effect link!

Lots of us remember studying Mesopotamia in middle school. What were those two rivers called? (The Tigris and the Euphrates!) Not everyone remembers that the Fertile Crescent still runs straight through Iraq, nourishing a rich cultural heritage and supporting a lush collection of wildlife and plant life. This has been the case since, well, the earliest civilizations.

These days, however, rising populations and the resulting increases in industrial production and the consumption of water have led to higher pollution levels throughout this precious region and the entire country. This video about Nature Iraq’s “Upper Tigris Waterkeeper Project” demonstrates some of the pollution problems facing Iraq as well as the direct, hands-on efforts to conserve the natural beauty and biodiversity of Iraq.

One of the Iraq Upper Tigris Waterkeeper’s duties is to monitor the car washing in rivers, a very common occurrence in the area from nature iraq on Vimeo.

Iraq’s ecological problems are twofold; lack of awareness is leading to the abuse and pollution of natural resources and Global Climate Change is leading to increased desertification. These have led to rising health concerns, such as dust storms in Baghdad that cause asthmatic deaths, and social concerns: such as increased migration rates, and greater numbers of resulting conflicts.

Fortunately there are organizations like Nature Iraq, Iraq’s first and only affiliate to Bird Life International, and one of the excellent organizations that EPIC is currently working with on the ground. Nature Iraq’s dedicated and hard working staff represents every sect and segment of Iraqi society. Their mission is to protect, restore, and preserve Iraq’s natural environment and the rich cultural heritage that it nourishes. Their task is not an easy one: after 35 years of war and sanctions, much of Iraq’s ecology has been neglected and abused.

One of their immediate priorities is to gather data and make a general assessment of the present condition of Iraq’s environment in order to progress with ecological preservation. Their hope is that as Iraq moves forward with reconstruction and socio-economic development, that they will also be addressing issues of water scarcity, sustainable farming, pollution, and environmental restoration.

I strongly encourage you to browse through Nature Iraq’s galleries and videos, the images are beautifully captured and show a side of Iraq that we don’t often get to see when we turn on the news. If you, as I do, appreciate the work that Nature Iraq is doing, then you will be pleased to find out that Nature Iraq will be working with EPIC to educate participants in our Iraqi Youth Hike. Nature Iraq will lead workshops during the course of the hike and discuss the importance of environmental conservation. In addition, they will also be giving EPIC and the youth hikers access to their Eco-Camp, a permanent camp built by Nature Iraq at the foot of the Peramagroon Mountain.

We here at EPIC are extremely proud and happy to be working with Nature Iraq as they mentor the hikers about the importance of conservation for the future of Iraq.

Last weekend, at 7:45 on a Friday morning, a rag tag group of students rolled into the dusty parking lot behind the American University of Iraq – Sulaimani (AUI-S). Friday is our Saturday; work weeks here run Sunday to Thursday, so you can imagine the general distaste for coming to work and school on a day that you usually want to do anything but. Nonetheless thirty of us showed up ready to hike, many for the first time.

In the week before the big day, Leah McNally, the Athletic Director at AUI-S, and I discussed our befuddlement at the massive interest in the hike; the 30 slots had filled immediately upon announcement and there were 40 on the waiting list. I asked her, “Do you think they understand what this hike is? I mean that it’s not a picnic?” Picnicking is the all time favorite Kurdish tradition and the season is currently in high gear. It turned out that indeed most of them did realize this, and wanted to go anyway.

This would be the inaugural hike of the Trailblazers, the new AUI-S Hiking Club, started by two enterprising and committed young hikers, Ali Imani and Agri Taimur Ghafur.

Ali Imani is a young MBA student. Originally from Iran, Ali started college at AUI-S in Fall 2009.

Agri Taimur Ghafur is a second semester undergraduate at AUI-S. Ever since when his family moved from Iran to Koya, a town about an hour from the city of Sulaymaniyah, Agri has been an avid hiker. His father is Iranian and his mother is from Halabja, a town of unfortunate fame.

During Saddam’s brutal Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, hundreds of villages were razed to the ground, their inhabitants massacred. On March 16, 1988, in what remains the worst chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history, the people of Halabja were indiscriminately assaulted with rockets, napalm, and multiple chemical agents, including mustard gas and sarin, killing thousands. Many thousands more died in the years that followed from injuries and health complications related to that attack and exposure to chemical weapons.

Agri’s interest in hiking comes from many places. Personally, he enjoys hiking because he is out in nature and around his friends. He started the hiking club to “meet new people” and “encourage interest in hiking and the environment and nature here.” Also, Agri sees it as an opportunity for men and women to participate in a sport together. Sports here, as in much of the world, are separated by gender and are not common for women.

And as Agri hoped, the inaugural hike through Chami Rezan last Friday was composed of women and men, students from different places in Kurdistan and from down south in Baghdad. Chami Rezan has everything a hiker could want, and more. We passed families picnicking everywhere on our way in, cooking ‘yaprakh’ (Kurdish) or ‘dolma’ (Arabic) (the most delicious of local foods – spiced rice and meat wrapped in vegetables) and dancing to their car radios. Several of us were almost lost to the fumes rising from the pots, we carried on.

The trail follows the side of a mountain along a river with small grade rapids here and there. Everywhere was green, as is true for the entire region right now. In Kurdistan in the spring, grass rises out of every dirt field as far as the eye can see. Wildflowers were in full bloom – red, yellow, white every few feet. “I loved being in direct contact with nature,” Ahmed, a first year academic student from Baghdad commented, whose family now lives in Sulaimani. The hike started out fairly easy but became increasingly challenging. We climbed up steep narrow passes and along ridges. Some were nervous for brief intervals, a few students slipped on loose rocks, and everyone helped each other. It was not easy at points – one part in particular after we took a wrong turn and had to descend a slippery, steep path.

Mariem, a third year academic student from Baghdad, told me that what she liked most about the hike was “that everyone helped each other…like one big hand.” Students were offering hands, walking sticks, advice, and eventually, stories and laughs about how each one made it down the steep pass successfully. It was a hot day, the sun was beating down, and everyone was sweating. Our final stop was at the river where a water fight broke out. All in all, it was a pretty normal hike.

The post hike wrap up has been amazing. Just as Agri had hoped, the new hikers were talking about how beautiful it was, how much they enjoyed being outside and exercising at the same time. Ahmed’s twin brother Aws loved the experience because of “the mixture of curiosity, encountering difficulties, having marvelous fun and discovering new places.” All student-hikers felt as though they needed to take more advantage of this amazing environment around them. The concept of ‘discovery’ was a theme in many of their responses. They clearly also felt a sense of accomplishment after the 3 hours of sweating in the heat and some challenging inclines and descents.

They also wondered when we were going again; each student with whom I have spoke cannot wait for the next outing. The spark seems to have been lit, and there are so many places left to explore. Kurdistan is not just for picnicking anymore.

Check out some photos from the hike!