Since I have been in the United States, I have been involved in many clubs and organizations in school. I was a member of the Saudi Student Club, and later, I became President. Eventually, I became the President of the Saudi Union in New England, which includes six states and 11 universities. I noticed that most new young Saudis struggle during their first days in the U.S. due to a lack of language proficiency and information.
As an international student myself, I know that nothing can compare to the excitement and enthusiasm that an international student feels when he or she gets an acceptance letter from the school of his or her choice.

Imagine traveling to a country without knowing the language or anything about the culture. All you know is that you are going to stay there at least one year! Yes, it might be exciting for some, but surely, it would be frightening for many, especially for those who have no one in that country. Most universities have excellent and informative materials sent along with the I-20 to the student before he or she arrives in the U.S. However, most schools send their handbooks, brochures, and official papers to the student in English; this is meaningless for someone who is coming here to study English. Therefore, I started to gather as much information as I can about the US, the State, the university, the city, and other general information and translated these into Arabic. We handed out the handbooks during orientation days to the new students. Later, we decided to convert all of it into a PDF file and share it on our social media accounts, so anyone can benefit from it even before arriving in the US. We put our knowledge and experiences into the handbook. We included mistakes we had made that we wanted the new students to avoid. It took months for us to complete the work; it was a challenge for us to gather that much information. The first guidebook I did was in 2012 when I was at the University of Michigan, and the second one was in 2016 after I moved to Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. And still, I get emails from new students thanking me for doing that. I am pleased that someone finds our work helpful.

Providence,RI: goo.gl/EEFF4F 

Flint, MI:  goo.gl/M5iUBi