Jerome Lohez 9/11 Foundation

Description

Word from the Founder

Chers Amis,

The frontiers of culture do not, in fact, coincide with national boundaries. The latter divide people according to some of their loyalties and customs, but not according to what makes them happy, what makes one a genuine human being. I am surprised by international misunderstandings in their subtlest forms, by the inability of people to tune into one another's wavelength.

Engineering technologies and computer science had made it easy to cross national frontiers physically, but there has been no invention of new mental habits to enable people to cope with others who have different world views. For that to happen, we must encourage young people to travel, to study and to live in countries different from their own.

When individuals have looked beyond their familiar surroundings, when they have lived and traveled in foreign lands, they have discovered that many strangers share their emotions and interests. No life can be considered to be fully lived if it has not benefited from all the encounters of which it is capable.

Every scientific discovery, indeed, is inspired by a similar search and by the meeting of ideas that previously never came together. So too is the objective of our foundation, which is to give students opportunities to find connections between what seem to have no connection, linking applied science with culture, people and places by rendering communications, encounters and exchanges possible.

This foundation was founded in honor of a deceased young man who came from the nation that gave the world "La declaration des Droits de L'Homme et du Citoyen" (The Declarations of Rights of Man and Citizen), and who was an engineer who believed in humanism. This foundation also is an effort by a group of private citizens to do something positive for society.

Un Grand Merci,
Dening Lohez