At the Ibrahim Kabbani Foundation we develop, evaluate, and disseminate programs that foster important life skills for teen survivability, development, and success. While nurturing our teenagers’ capacity to think skillfully and critically, we also strive to deepen their commitment to pro-social values such as kindness, helpfulness, personal responsibility, and respect for others - qualities we believe are essential to leading humane and productive lives. We will initially focus on safe and mature driving habits, and help write and sponsor appropriate legislation that supports the development of these life skills.
Vision: We are recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in teen life-skill education.
Guiding Principles: To realize our mission and vision, we adhere to the following guiding principles:
Live Fully, Tread Lightly: We want to make a difference without causing collateral damage.
We have a bias for action: “A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.” (thought by Khalil Gibran).
Integrity: What we say we will do, we will do. We will not disseminate false or unproven information. You can trust the Ibrahim Kabbani Foundation.
Live by what we preach:
o Provide meaning and context that impacts lives in deep and significant ways
o Strive for Breakthrough Understanding in all our decisions
o Guard against the tyranny of bad habits, emotional reactions, and faulty dilemmas in our decision-making
Life skills are found in the obvious and not so obvious places—such as music, literature, diversity projects, and tree plantings. We will look for innovative and exciting ways to create meaning and context for teen learning.
We are a California (the adopted home of Ibrahim Kabbani) Non-Profit organization with a national and international reach. We are also recognized and authorized as a non-profit educational foundation in Lebanon (the birth home of Ibrahim Kabbani). Ibrahim died as the result of immature and irresponsible decision-making on the part of a teen driver. To help others avoid this kind of tragedy through the twin imperatives of taking personal responsibility and better decision-making; and to celebrate the values Ibrahim held dear: kindness, helpfulness, and respect for others, the family of Ibrahim founded this dynamic and passionate international enterprise. Although we are principally a teen life-skill education foundation, we also dedicate efforts toward key areas of local, state, national and international legislation that support teen survivability and success.
The Ibrahim Kabbani Foundation was started with a personal grant from the Kabbani family, as well as extended family members and friends of the family. The foundation continues to exist through donations from the interested public and from fund-raising events and projects.
We provide scholarships for graduating seniors interested in pursuing advanced education in music or education. We sponsor a website that provides education to teens in interesting ways, including teen blogs and a future wiki for learning content. There are many foundations and websites that tell teens—advice is directed at teens like a firehouse on a burning house. We want to help teens build safer and more productive houses. Our goal is to help teens make mature decisions through what we call Breakthrough Understanding.
The following matrix provides a charted course to personal Breakthrough Understanding.
First a brief explanation of the chart, followed by definitions and application:
On the Y axis, we achieve Understanding on three progressive, but interconnected levels: 1) Knowledge, 2) Intelligence, and 3) Wisdom. This is not, however a traditional hierarchy chart as we will see. It is through our increased understanding (increased clarification of meaning) that our judgment is validated and that we learn to do the right thing. On the X axis, we achieve Utility on three progressive levels: 1) Experience, 2) Obedience, and 3) Vision. It is through increased utility (increased ability to transmit context) that our justification is validated and that we learn the right reasons for our actions. Where on the matrix do our decisions reside? Teens in particular turn over most of our decision making freedom to peer pressure, emotions, and habit—all resident in the lower left of the Personal Decision Matrix. How can we help teens employ universal principles? What really are teen values? Can we help those values find compatibility with universal principles? We believe this is possible. Have we ever considered how constructive imagination and serendipity could help or hinder the discovery of the best decisions? This is much more natural to a teen mind than for “stuck in a rut” adult minds. If we are brutally honest with ourselves and take the time to sort through decisions, it is at each intersection of each level of understanding and utility we achieve self-awareness and ultimately Breakthrough Understanding on the personal level. This matrix does not demand a step-by-step system for making a decision, but rather attempts to provide a clarification of personal attitude and a heuristic method for teen decision making improvement.
Definitions and application—starting with the matrix X and Y axes:
Understanding: The level of meaning for the decision-maker, clarity and comprehensive inclusion of appropriate data. Understanding provides the ability to apply judgment (the process of forming an opinion) to do the right thing.
Utility: The level of personal and enterprise process maturity to achieve a shared context, or circumstance surrounding the decision. Includes organization, structure, distribution, access, and most important, appropriateness. Utility provides the ability to apply justification—that is, doing something for the right reason.
Data: The bottom left corner of the matrix represents the starting place, the stimulus that begins the decision making process. Data is the basic facts (or assumed facts). These facts are non-correlated, unfiltered, and not yet validated. This level holds a basic level of meaning and context for the decision-maker and a minimal level of established practice. From the external point of view, this level holds no ambiguity, but is the highest level of ambiguity from the internal “meaning” point of view.
Knowledge: Increased meaning and more established practices through basic filtering—possibly combined with theory, experience, and testing, but that is not fully validated or distributed. Knowledge isn’t valuable if it doesn’t lead to correct actions. In fact, if its flawed knowledge, it can lead down the path to failure.
Intelligence: Less ambiguity and “automatic decision making due to self-meaning and data meaning clarity and still more established practices. Distributed and self-validated knowledge. Intelligence is powerful, but difficult to manage as self-meaning continues to evolve.
Wisdom: A near absence of ambiguity and thus the easiest area for the decision-maker to put meaning into practice. This is the farthest from utility, because this is the area where practice is most difficult to transfer.
Experience: Observation and minimal level of context resulting in a basic level of utility. This is located in the lower left of the Personal Decision Matrix. Teen experience is minimal and sometimes misleading because of minimal separate experiences. “Hey, I can wait until the last minute to study because I did that and did OK on my last test.” “I can drive fast..., I haven’t got in an accident yet, have I?”
Obedience: Acceptance and submissiveness to a requirement, authority, priority, or desire. Following rules that establish context (even if the context has less meaning as we move farther from the Y axis) to make decisions.
Vision: Very high context, but farther removed from standard and established personal practice. Something seen otherwise than by ordinary sight. A developed competence in perception, discernment and intelligent foresight.
Filling in the Matrix—Types of decisions (maturity, power, and stimulus behind the decisions):
Intuition: Low meaning and low context. Nurtured by the intersection of knowledge and experience. Trial and error provide a basis for the decision, but emotion, ego, expectation, neurological drives, and other basic response factors are involved in intuitive decisions.
Habit: Low meaning higher context. Nurtured by the intersection of knowledge and obedience. A constant, often unconscious inclination to perform an act or create a thought—acquired through frequent repetition—not meaningful practice.
Serendipity: Lowest meaning and highest context. Nurtured by the intersection of knowledge and vision. Horace Walpole, the ‘inventor’ of this word would not agree with modern dictionary definitions of serendipity that tend to lean on fate or luck. His definition is, “That quality of mind, which through sagacity and good fortune, allows one to frequently discover something good while seeking something else.”
Intellect: Higher meaning and low context. Nurtured by the intersection of intelligence and experience. The ability to learn and reason—as distinguished from the ability to feel, yet think abstractly, that provides the mental space for new knowledge and understanding.
Personal Mission Statement: Balanced mid-levels of meaning and context. Nurtured by the intersection of intelligence and obedience. A self-imposed duty that reflects personal identity, goals, and direction. This will change over time for the teen, but direction is initially more important than speed.
Universal Principles: Mid-level meaning, but higher context. Nurtured by the intersection of intelligence and vision. Basic truths or governing laws with attached judgments that are fixed and predetermined. (e.g. Law of the Harvest).
Constructive Imagination: Mid-level context, but higher meaning. Nurtured by the intersection wisdom and experience. The ability to form an idea or concept that can become real in the future. The ability to look into unborn history.
Values: Highest meaning, but only mid-level context. Nurtured by the intersection of wisdom and obedience. A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile, or desirable.
Breakthrough Understanding: Here is the key to successful teen life skills. This is where highest meaning and highest context combine for best decisions. Nurtured by the intersection wisdom and vision. Judgment and comprehension combining to overcome an obstacle or constraint that permits further progress. This is a difficult balance and a challenge to maintain, but today’s teens are not only capable of achieving this, they are naturals.
Dependent Accountability: This column highlights the danger of low context situations in attempting to transmit practice for better decisions. Decision-making in this realm is contingent on something or someone else—such as teen peer pressure. Individual responsibility is at a minimum and reliance on an external actor is at a maximum—which may include over-influence and control.
Independent Accountability: Somewhat higher context in this column. Free from influence, guidance, or control; self-reliant. Individual responsibility is at its maximum and reliance on external actors is at a minimum. The importance is put on autonomy, self-governance, and being free from the influence and control of others.
Interdependent Accountability: Highest context because it is shared. Mutual dependence. Value is placed on differences, that is, we are not the same, but we are equal. We build on each others strengths and compensate for each others weaknesses.
There is a certain danger in over simplifying, but to raise the dust and then complain that you can’t see is as fruitless a folly. Many teen support sources do just that—raise the dust—without giving teens the tools and understanding to handle challenges as responsible members of society. As our foundation grows, we hope to expand our capabilities to eliminate the dust that teens struggle with today.
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