Mission Statement
- Raise awareness of the Iranian culture and community;
- Promote leadership in the Iranian diaspora community, with a specific focus on the younger generation; and
- Connect Iranians across a variety of borders.
Who We Are
Iranian Alliances Across Borders (IAAB) is an organization with a young, dedicated, and all-volunteer staff spread across the United States, Europe and Iran.
Established in 2003 by students at Wellesley College and Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, Iranian Alliances Across Borders is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan organization that addresses issues of the Iranian diaspora by facilitating community building, developing ways to better understand what it means to be part of a diaspora community, and helping members of the Iranian diaspora community enhance connections with their new communities as well as maintain connections with their root community.
Why We Exist
As Iranians in the diaspora continue to build roots in their new countries, and as a new generation of hyphenated Iranians - Iranian-Americans, British-Iranians, French-Iranians, etc. - enter their mid-twenties, the social and psychological implications of these new communities needs to be addressed. It is often said that Iranian-Americans are among the most successful minorities in the United States. If this is true, several questions need to be addressed:
- What are the implications of this "success"?
- How integrated and involved are Iranians in their new countries?
- Where are these communities now, how are they growing, and in what direction should they continue to grow?
- How important is knowledge of the Persian language for the second-generation, and what ties, if any, does this generation have with Iran?
- What types of alliances can be forged between Iranians in the various communities they now call home?
As hyphenated Iranians become further rooted in their new societies, it is important to analyze questions of identity and community formation. IAAB hopes to provide the environment and opportunity for our communities to engage these questions at the same time that we encourage the building of alliances across our various borders.
How We Achieve Our Goals
Iranian Alliances Across Borders (IAAB) seeks to address the most current issues facing the Iranian diaspora as identified by members of the diaspora. To that end, IAAB has:
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held three very successful international conferences on the Iranian diaspora (2004, 2005, 2007);
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provided three very impactful week-long leadership camp experiences for high school students through Camp Ayandeh (2006, 2007, 2008);
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conducted two Essay Contests, inspiring many beautifully reflective pieces from Iranian diaspora youth worldwide (2006, 2008);
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curated “Transform/Nation,” a collection of diaspora art simultaneously held in Tehran, Iran and Washington, D.C. (2007);
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held seminars on Bam-related relief efforts (2004, 2005), and much more.
Additionally, IAAB works in conjunction with the Iranian Studies Group (ISG) at MIT in maintaining Project Connection, an online resource center for students in our community to access information about internships in Iran.
