The E-Collaborative for Civic Education is a 501c3 organization with a mission to leverage technology — internet communications technology, social networks, television and radio, mobile phones, e-learning classroom platforms, and more — to promote democracy and human rights internationally.
ECCE strives to provide to individuals of all ages in repressive or transitioning political systems civic education opportunities concerning:
Read about our flagship project, the Tavaana E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society, here.
Akbar Atri is co-founder and director of the E-Collaborative for Civic Education, leading the organization’s strategic vision and outreach. Akbar is a veteran human rights activist and former Iranian student leader. Born in a small village in Iranian Azerbaijan, he brings significant insight into varied strands of the Iranian social fabric, from the rural farm to the urban factory to the large university and beyond. Akbar was elected annually to the leadership of Iran’s largest student organization, Tahkim Vahdat, for ten years and was the organization’s spokesperson. In this capacity he was a regular conduit of human rights information to the international media, delivered hundreds of speeches and engaged in countless civic dialogues, sit-ins, and protests at universities throughout the country. Akbar was one of the original drafters of the Referendum Movement on the Iranian Constitution and has been sentenced in absentia to a minimum of seven years in prison for his human rights activism. Akbar earned his B.A. in Political Science at Allame Tabatabaie University in Tehran, Iran, and an MA in Political Science at Mofid University in Qom, Iran. In 2011, Akbar earned a second MA degree in Conflict Resolution and Analysis at George Mason University.
Kathryn Groth is an education specialist currently serving a second term as a member of the Frederick County, Maryland Board of Education. Katie is a community organizer, avid world traveler and promoter of quality education in sustaining an engaged citizenry. She trained as a speech/language pathologist, having received her BA and MA from the University of Maryland, College Park. During her career, she has worked at the Maryland School for the Deaf and for Frederick County Public Schools.
Roya Hakakian is a writer and journalist whose reportage has been featured on network television, and her opinions and essays appear in the New York Times, NPR’s Weekend Edition, and the Washington Post, among others. Her poetry in Persian has been included in many anthologies, including the PEN anthology of contemporary Iranian literature. Her acclaimed memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran was one of Publisher Weekly’s Best Books and Elle Magazine’s Best Nonfiction in 2004. She’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction for her recent book, Assassins of the Turquoise Palace. It was also a 2011 Kirkus Review’s Best and a New York Times Notable Book. She is a founding member of Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and is a fellow at Yale University’s Davenport College. Born and raised in a Jewish family in Tehran, Roya came to the United States in May 1985 on political asylum.
Twitter: @RoyaTheWriter
Facebook: Hakakian.Roya
Nima Rashedan is ECCE’s cybersecurity expert and trainer in subjects related to digital safety. He is an expert on cybersecurity, web-based communication, and Internet censorship in the Iranian context. He received his BS.c in Software Engineering from Tehran North Azad University in 1996. He was the publisher of Iran’s first bulletin board systems from 1995 to 1997, and from 1998 to 1999, he served as senior communications adviser to dozens of Iranian reformist groups and newspapers. From 1999 to 2005, he was Project Manager at Gooya.com, the first and most popular Persian web portal. He has been a technology and digital safety adviser to several human rights and pro-democracy web projects and is a regular cyber-security columnist for Radio Farda’s website.
Rend Al-Rahim is the executive director and a co-founder of the Iraq Foundation, a non-profit organization working for human rights and democracy in Iraq. From November 2003 to December 2004, she served as Iraq’s ambassador to the United States and later the Iraqi chief of mission. Ms. Al-Rahim has contributed to numerous reports and books on Iraq and written policy papers and reports for the Iraq Foundation. In addition, she has built partnerships and cooperative relations with several non-governmental and research institutions and has also testified on Iraq before the U.S. Congress. She is co-author of The Arab Shi’a: Forgotten Muslims, published in 2000. She holds degrees from Cambridge University and the University of the Sorbonne in Paris.
Ladan Archin has over 15 years of experience in public policy, international finance and consulting. Born and raised in Iran, Ladan moved to the United States of America as the home that she knew was transforming into one ruled by an Islamic autocracy. With a bachelor’s degree in physics, and while enrolled in a master’s program in applied mathematics, Ladan decided to change course and began studying international relations and economics at Johns Hopkins School of International Studies (SAIS), where she was research assistant to Professor Fouad Ajami. Subsequent to graduation from SAIS, Ladan joined the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After two years, Ladan moved to Washington, DC and worked for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of World Bank Group from 1995 until 2001. She then moved to San Francisco to work at a start up company, but after the events of 9/11, moved back to Washington. Ladan was the Iran Country Director for the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2002 to 2007. Later, Ladan served as Assistant Director at the Department of Treasury’s Terror Finance and Intelligence Department, in charge of the Middle East, Africa and the Western Hemisphere. During her tenure with both US Treasury and DOD, Ladan advised various US Government senior-level staff on strategy and policy via briefings, reports, and presentations. She later lived in Dubai, UAE for two years to help open Grant Thornton’s investment advisory offices there. She is now a consultant at Toffler Associates, and lives in Washington, DC.
Eugenia Kemble is executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, a non-profit organization endowed by the American Federation of Teachers and dedicated to publishing reports and fostering candid exchange on education, labor, and democracy issues. In her previous work at the American Federation of Teachers as special assistant to AFT president Albert Shanker, she obtained funding to create the union’s main professional development effort for teachers, the Education Research and Dissemination Program, and to start the AFT’s professional magazine, The American Educator, both of which she managed for a number of years. She also revamped the AFT’s annual Quality Educational Standards in Teaching (QuEST) conference and helped Mr. Shanker spearhead the creation of the union’s Educational Issues, Research and International Affairs Departments. In 1983, Kemble was named as the AFL-CIO’s representative to the Democracy Program, a coalition effort including the Republican Party, Democratic Party, U.S. Chambers of Commerce, and AFL-CIO, that recommended the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy. In 1984 Ms. Kemble was named the executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Free Trade Union Institute, which supported union efforts involved in democracy-building, most notably Solidarity in Poland. Returning to the AFT in 1989, she directed and helped to expand the AFT’s Educational Issues Department, which soon became one of the largest, most influential departments in the union.
Ahmad Nader Nadery is a commissioner at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. He represented Afghan civil society at the UN peace talks for Afghanistan at the 2001 Bonn Conference. Mr. Nadery is also the chairperson of the Fair and Free Election Foundation of Afghanistan, a member of the Steering Committee of Citizens Against Terror, and on the advisory board to Open Society Institute’s Afghanistan programs. He has written extensively on politics, human rights, women’s rights and democracy in Afghanistan and is a member of the Board of Editors of the Oxford Journal on Transitional Justice. Mr. Nadery served as spokesperson for the national assembly (Loya Jerga) in 2002. He studied law and political sciences at Kabul University and earned his M.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University.
Mark Palmer is vice chairman of Freedom House, vice president of the Council for a Community of Democracies, an advisory board member of the Democracy Project, and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy. During his career in the State Department, he was U.S. Ambassador to Hungary from 1986-90 and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from 1982-86. He co-founded and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. Mr. Palmer is the President of Capital Development Company, which supports local partners in launching new enterprises in Washington DC, Europe, and Asia. He founded Central European Media Enterprises Ltd., which develops and operates national television and radio stations from Bucharest, Ljubijana, Prague, Bratislava, Warsaw and Kiev. He is the author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025.
Akbar Atri is co-founder and director of the E-Collaborative for Civic Education, leading the organization’s strategic vision and outreach. Akbar is a veteran human rights activist and former Iranian student leader. Born in a small village in Iranian Azerbaijan, he brings significant insight into varied strands of the Iranian social fabric, from the rural farm to the urban factory to the large university and beyond.
Akbar was elected annually to the leadership of Iran’s largest student organization, Tahkim Vahdat, for ten years and was the organization’s spokesperson. In this capacity he was a regular conduit of human rights information to the international media and delivered hundreds of speeches and engaged in countless civic dialogues, sit ins, and protests at universities throughout the country. Akbar was one of the original drafters of the Referendum Movement on the Iranian Constitution and has been sentenced in absentia to a minimum of seven years in prison for his human rights activism. Akbar earned his B.A. in Political Science at Allame Tabatabaie University in Tehran, Iran, and an MA in Political Science at Mofid University in Qom, Iran. In 2011, Akbar earned a second MA degree in Conflict Resolution and Analysis at George Mason University.
The E-Collaborative for Civic Education (ECCE) is a U.S. based 501c3 organization with a mission to leverage technology to promote civic learning and democratic political life internationally. Through live e-learning platforms, social networks, mobile phones, television, radio and more, ECCE helps empower civil society groups by arming them with democratic knowledge and human rights awareness. The assumption guiding our vision is that individuals committed to democratic values, the rule of law, and the full spectrum of civil and political liberties are likely not only to press for their freedom but build the civil and political institutions that will sustain democracy and human rights.
As co-founder and director of the organization, I have a long standing interest in civic education as well as a personal history of civic activism and aiding civic groups struggling against repressive regimes. I am from Iran, a country where a resilient civil society continues to do battle for the most basic of human rights. I spent ten years in the leadership of the Iranian student movement and was one of the original drafters of a referendum calling for a democratic constitution. I left Iran in 2005 and continue to work closely with civic activists throughout the country.
I am passionate about the ideas that shape an active citizenry and democratic political life. For me, the citizen and her civic duty in sustaining a democratic polity are primary, as fundamental as the universal rights any citizen should enjoy. The E-Collaborative for Civic Education sees democracy as the only political system able to secure equality, justice and the full spectrum of civil and political liberties for each and every citizen. We see democracy as both a set of values as well as a set of institutions and processes that foster peace, pluralism and open societies that reward human dignity and human achievement.
In 2010, our team launched ECCE’s flagship project, Tavaana: E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society. Tavaana is the pioneer effort to bring cutting edge e-learning technologies and pedagogic approaches to Iran. The site has become a trusted learning community by providing secure, anonymous live instruction courses for students throughout the country in subjects as varied as women’s rights, cybersecurity, and leadership. Complementing the live instruction courses, the institute offers self-learning manuals, case studies on civic movements and democratic transitions, interviews with activists and intellectuals, an annotated resource library, tools and guidance for Iranian educators and translations of key democracy texts. Tavaana’s inclusivity and attention to the full spectrum of rights has earned the credence of a broad spectrum of Iranian civic actors.
The E-Collaborative for Civic Education’s goals are to link the worlds of academia and practical learning, to bridge the knowledge and technology divides between civic actors working in free and unfree contexts, and to compensate for the ideological, rote learning forced in places such as Iran with engaging, international standard civic literacy initiatives. We believe strongly in the power of partnership, and see technology as facilitating collaboration in ways that transcend all manner of boundaries. Our partners include courageous, civic-minded women and men fighting against repression across the globe, as well as international organizations such as: the Center for Civic Education/CIVITAS, the Albert Shanker Institute, Mobile Active, and the New Tactics in Human Rights Project. Our teaching faculty includes the world’s leading experts in human rights, democracy and civil society.
ECCE will continue to build the capacity of Iranian civil society while also shaping similar learning communities for other repressive regime contexts. And we will always stand ready to help those standing in defiance of repressive regimes, including civic leaders, intellectuals, educators, human rights defenders and others engaged in the hard struggle for human rights and democracy.
We hope you will join us! You can get involved by spreading the word, helping us recruit students, by volunteering your time or by making a financial contribution to our efforts. Thank you for sharing in the mission of education for freedom!