WASHINGTON, D.C. – More than 300 K‑12 schools in Amer­i­ca have joined Pres­i­dent Obama’s Con­nect All Schools ini­tia­tive since its launch­ing in March of 2011.

The ini­tia­tive, which seeks to “con­nect every school in the US with the world by 2016,” is a part­ner­ship of the US Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, US Depart­ment of State, and Qatar Foun­da­tion International.

Accord­ing to Con­nect All Schools, it all began with Pres­i­dent Obama’s “his­toric speech” in Cairo, Egypt in 2009 where he expressed his desire to “cre­ate a new online net­work, so a young per­son in Kansas can com­mu­ni­cate instant­ly with a young per­son in Cairo.”

In an effort to build “glob­al com­pe­ten­cy” by con­nect­ing US stu­dents to stu­dents around the world, Con­nect All Schools and its part­ners facil­i­tate schools with glob­al issues cur­ricu­lum, online col­lab­o­ra­tion, youth and teacher exchanges, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment on inter­na­tion­al edu­ca­tion, video-con­fer­ences, and more.

For exam­ple, at Alice Deal Mid­dle School in Wash­ing­ton, DC, stu­dents con­nect­ed with Israel, Sau­di Ara­bia, and Syr­ia for a les­son that exam­ined “how the media in the U.S. stereo­types Mus­lims in a neg­a­tive light.”

At North­west School in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton, 6th grade stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Glob­al Issues unit that, accord­ing to Con­nect All Schools, allowed them to “see them­selves in a glob­al con­text and gain knowl­edge of how resources are spread unequal­ly around the world.”

“This unit is about research and inves­ti­ga­tion of the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of glob­al issues,” says North­west co-teacher, Heather Hall. “But the most sig­nif­i­cant aspect is the action com­po­nent. Each stu­dent inves­ti­gates, designs, and car­ries out an action in the local com­mu­ni­ty to address a glob­al problem.”

As report­ed in 2012, the Qatar Foun­da­tion has close ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and was start­ed by the for­mer Emir of Qatar and founder of Al Jazeera news net­work, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khal­i­fa Al Thani.

Carnegie Cor­po­ra­tion Pres­i­dent Var­tan Gre­go­ri­an, who played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the cre­ation of the Com­mon Core State Stan­dards, is a Qatar Foun­da­tion board mem­ber.

In 2006, the coun­try of Qatar donat­ed $100 mil­lion dol­lars to the city of New Orleans for hur­ri­cane recov­ery efforts. From that dona­tion, $12.5 mil­lion was used to build a Col­lege of Phar­ma­cy build­ing at Xavier Uni­ver­si­ty. Sheikh Hamad bin Khal­i­fa attend­ed the ground­break­ing ceremony.

Sev­er­al Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Carnegie Mel­lon, Texas A&M, and North­west­ern, have estab­lished satel­lite cam­pus­es in Dohar, Qatar and par­tic­i­pate in stu­dent exchange programs.

In an effort to alert these uni­ver­si­ties and oth­ers to the fact that Qatar is a “per­ni­cious spon­sor of Islam­ic ter­ror,” Col. Allen West, Frank Gaffney, Jr. of the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, recent­ly joined with sev­er­al oth­ers to start the Qatar Aware­ness Campaign.

Accord­ing to the group:

Qatar is arguably the pre­em­i­nent spon­sor of ter­ror in the world today. It is a bene­fac­tor of the geno­ci­dal armies of ISIS, al Qae­da, and Boko Haram; it is involved in Tal­iban nar­cotics traf­fick­ing through a rela­tion­ship with the Pak­istani Nation­al Logis­tics Cell; and prof­its from oper­at­ing a vir­tu­al slave state. Qatar has lever­aged its rela­tion­ships with vio­lent jiha­di groups to its own ben­e­fit, and to the detri­ment of the Unit­ed States and her allies.

In addi­tion to the Con­nect All Schools ini­tia­tive, Qatar has gained access to America’s K‑12 stu­dents through oth­er edu­ca­tion pro­grams as well.

For exam­ple, Qatar Foun­da­tion International’s “flag­ship” Ara­bic Lan­guage and Cul­ture pro­gram is offered in sev­er­al US schools and districts.

In 2012, PS 368 in Hamil­ton Heights Man­hat­tan became the first school in the coun­try to imple­ment the organization’s Ara­bic lan­guage course as a required course of study for its ele­men­tary students.

Qatar’s access to America’s youth, how­ev­er, is not lim­it­ed to online inter­ac­tions and the imple­men­ta­tion of glob­al cur­ric­u­la. Last year, for exam­ple, stu­dents from New Orleans’ Inter­na­tion­al High School were select­ed by the Qatar Foun­da­tion to trav­el to Doha to rep­re­sent the US in a Mod­el Unit­ed Nations assembly.