Our purpose is to welcome immigrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and other countries of North Africa and the Middle East. We are the Arab-American Culture and Entertainment Organization, formed in 2016 to welcome our Arab brothers and sisters to America and to Maine in particular. We started as a small group of four families and now we are many many families more than 80. Many live up North in Maine in Augusta, Waterville and Skowhegan but the majority live in Southern Maine. We celebrate our origins through music, dance, dress, prayer, drama, and oration. All of our countries of origin have a very rich history in art, music, science and mathematics and much of our history is intertwined now with America. We are Arab-Americans and we are proud of it. We were able to get safely out of our countries because of our American friends who helped us. We helped them during the war by translating and interpreting and tracking and deep information and now we are in this land of freedom. We want so much to celebrate who we are, to integrate totally with out American friends, and to become leading citizens. We are ALL highly educated--in 2017, we estmated there were more than 80 Iraqi scientists living in Maine. Men AND women.