The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is a United States State Department program that fosters meaningful and effective partnerships between citizens, civil society, the private sector, and governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to resolve local challenges and promote shared interests in the areas of participatory governance and economic opportunity and reform.
Focusing on promoting stability and prosperity in the region, MEPI supports partnerships through projects that are responsive to emerging opportunities by being field-driven, applying evidence-based decision-making, and designing results-oriented projects.
Four of MEPI's most prominent leadership programs are its annual Student Leaders program that brings students from all over the MENA region to participate in an intensive leadership training course of approximately 5 weeks in the United States, its Leaders for Democracy Fellowship program that provides early and mid-career professionals from the MENA region with the opportunity to complete training in participatory governance, conflict resolution, and political mobilization and communication, and its Tomorrow's Leaders undergraduate and graduate program which provides scholarships to promising, under-served students from the MENA region through accredited regional institutions.