Tag: Participant Profile

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CSOP Participant Profile – Itiovie Ayeni

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

CSOP course engages student’s passion for supporting refugees

After graduating, Itiovie Ayeni wants to work in services supporting refugees, a cause about which she’s passionate. So, when she read the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) courses offered in 2021, she knew exactly which one she needed to take.

She enrolled in Refugees and Displacement: Learning to Extend Hospitality, co-taught by Mary Jo Leddy and Dan Epp-Tiessen. Leddy is a renowned Canadian writer, theologian, and social activist, who is known for her work with refugees at Toronto’s Romero House. Epp-Tiessen is Emeritus Associate Professor of Bible at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) and a preacher, writer, and former pastor who explores how scripture intersects with issues of peace and justice.

Ayeni, 25, moved to Canada from Nigeria in 2019 to study for her Master of Arts in Peacebuilding and Collaborative Development at CMU. Before that, she spent a year mentoring young girls in northern Nigeria, where there is a prevalent culture of child marriage. She raised money on her own initiative so the girls under her care could stay in school. “I had to make sure they knew that they mattered,” Ayeni said, “because the culture is more like only boys matter, girls don’t matter.”

When she first started at CMU, she took a course on refugees and forced displacement with Stephanie Stobbe, Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, a program centre of CMU. Ayeni said that while the fight for refugee rights and gender rights are not identical, what she was learning about refugee advocacy “resonated with what I had been doing before.”

Her experience at CSOP reinforced those connections, and only strengthened her desire to bring her skills to the field. “Although I had known I wanted to work with refugees, I feel like this class sealed it for me,” Ayeni said. “Mary Jo has been working with refugees for more than 30 years, and just hearing first-hand the struggles that people have to go through, it just resonated with me and made me say, ‘yes, this is what I want to do’.”

Refugees face a lot of challenges when they flee to another country, like Canada. Some are left alone and without a community, facing language barriers, inadequate affordable housing, and stereotypes and stigma. Ayeni didn’t come to Manitoba as a refugee, but she could relate to their experiences: “Coming here without a family, just myself, having to look for housing, learn to use the bus, trying to get a job, settling down is something I had to struggle through a bit,” she said. Knowing the difficulties of her own experience and realizing the additional struggles that refugees face was impactful for her.

Reading Leddy’s book, The Other Face of God: When the Stranger Calls Us Home, alongside Leddy’s teaching made theoretical situations come to life—sometimes quite literally. Hidat, a central figure in one of the stories in Leddy’s book, actually came in-person to share her story with the CSOP class. Hidat faced deportation decades ago and was given an unfair hearing, with an inadequate translator and a lawyer who slept during the trial. It wasn’t until Leddy stepped in and fought for her that Hidat had a chance of staying in Canada.

Ayeni was particularly moved by Hidat’s story after meeting her. “This is one person out of thousands of refugees,” Ayeni said. “I’m sure there are so many people who do not have that opportunity for anybody to fight for them. They get the ruling and that’s it.”

Stories like these inspired her to be more aware of what people around her are going through. “This course made me realize I have to slow down and check my environment, check myself. Where have I just ignored someone, where have people needed my help and I haven’t paid attention to it and passed by?”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Reezwana Yadallee

A woman of colour with long dark hair, wearing a red dress, stands outside in front of a tree, and smiles at the camera.

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

CSOP student brings learning back to social services work

When Reezwana Yadallee heard that Mary Jo Leddy was teaching a course at the 2021 Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), she told herself she could not miss it.

Leddy is the author of Radical Gratitude, a book that greatly impacted Yadallee when she read it for her class on voluntary simplicity at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). “[The book] forces you to do some self-introspection in a way, on yourself and what life actually really means,” Yadallee said.

The 45-year-old is studying Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies while also working in employment and income social services for the provincial government.

For her first CSOP course, she took Refugees and Displacement, Learning to Extend Hospitality with Leddy and Dan Epp-Tiessen, Emeritus Associate Professor of Bible at CMU. Epp-Tiessen is a preacher, writer, and former pastor who explores how scripture intersects with current issues like peace and justice and creation care. Leddy is a renowned Canadian writer, theologian, and social activist, who is known for her work with refugees at Toronto’s Romero House. “She inspires a lot of us just because of her way of seeing the world,” Yadallee said of Leddy. 

Yadallee also enrolled in the course because she interacts with refugees on a regular basis through her work, and wanted to bring her learning back to the office. She sees refugee crises broadcast on the news, debated in politics, and discussed among friends—and she knows refugees face challenges and misconceptions.

As a newcomer who came to Canada from Mauritius in 2017, Yadallee can connect to parts of refugees’ experiences. “In a way we’ve also fled our country, not because of war but for other reasons, trying to seek a new beginning,” she says.

Yet there’s much she can’t understand because her experience is fundamentally different. So listening to her CSOP classmates share about their lives was really meaningful. “It gives you a lot to think about when you listen to them,” she says. “That’s the chance where I get to really listen to someone, to a refugee, and learn from that person.”

The course’s participants came from a host of different countries, contexts, and ages, some even from different locations due to the online format. This diversity was a highlight that enriched Yadallee’s learning experience. “It’s just that I get to interact with other people whom I can relate with, which is something very important for me,” she says. “Having other students from different cultural backgrounds really helps.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Katie Anderson

A white woman with short hair smiles at the camera, outside of a house and sitting next to a pot of yellow and purple flowers.

by Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

CSOP course inspires student to navigate Indigenous and Christian identities

Katie Anderson signed up for the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) because with the notoriously full schedule of a music student, she wanted to spread out her course load. But the class quickly became so much more than just getting another credit under her belt.

Anderson, 20 years old and from Winnipeg, is in her third year of a Bachelor of Music with a concentration in early years education at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). For her first CSOP course, she took Creation and Community in Biblical and Indigenous Perspectives. It was taught by Sunder John Boopalan, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at CMU, and Danny Zacharias, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia and a faculty member of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies (NAITTS).

The professors and participants examined biblical texts about creation and community, and worked to decolonize scripture by shedding western lenses and instead reading the text through Indigenous lenses. They explored the similarities and differences between Christian and traditional Indigenous values related to creation and community.

“It’s super interesting as an Indigenous person and as a Christian to see how they can relate and differentiate from each other,” Anderson says. “I’m navigating what it means to be Indigenous and a Christian at the same time and how those can coexist together, so the course was super interesting to me.”

She wasn’t connected to her Indigenous culture while growing up because her family dissociated themselves from their Indigenous identity as a result of their Christianity. When she started attending CMU and was able to explore faith on her own, she began to see how the two were not mutually exclusive. “That’s what I appreciate about courses like this, is you can see where they both exist instead of just one or the other.”

Anderson appreciated the format of the course, which ran every morning for two weeks and included a lot of discussion time in addition to lectures. They covered a lot of ground, from capitalism to creation’s existence outside of its relationship to humans. Other participants contributed significantly to her learning: “I have a lot of graduate students in my class, so listening to what they interpret from scripture has been really interesting . . . People have made interesting connections that I just never thought about.”

Anderson explains this education in diversity will be helpful not only for her personal growth, but also for her future work in schools, where she will teach students and interact with coworkers from countless different cultures and religions. She hopes to take more CSOP courses in the future: “It’s exciting to see more classes like this in the curriculum.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Ka Boyet Ongkiko

Ka Boyet Ongkiko

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

Organizational consultant plans to bring learning to Philippines

For Ka Boyet Ongkiko, it was his work in the Philippines that brought him to the Canadian School of Peacebuilding.

Ongkiko, 56, lives in Manila, where he works as a consultant for organizational development. “I try to help make the organization better and more sustainable. So I work on the level of the board, managers, staff, and if the organization wants to go through some changes, I journey with them,” he said.

He works with many organizations, including the Coalition of Leprosy Advocates of the Philippines, God is Able International Foundation, and the Department of Agriculture. He is also a senior consultant at Peacebuilders Community in Mindanao and directs a certificate program in community transformation and leadership at the Asian School of Development and Cross-Cultural Studies. While in North America, he also attended gatherings in Toronto and Seattle and did consulting work in New Jersey.

For his first year at CSOP, Ongkiko took the course, Building Change with Human-Centred Design, taught by Roxy Allen Kioko. Kioko is a consultant in strategic planning and change management who has worked in the United States and abroad, and teaches at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia.

The class did hands-on, project-based work, interviewing people and working through the Human-Centred Design process, learning how to create strategies and solutions to real-world social change challenges that could apply directly to each individual’s area of interest.

“It’s good. There’s a lot of things that are new to me, but there are also things I already know that have been deepened because of the engagement of people—a lot of perspective shared,” Ongkiko said.

Among the 17 students in the class, there were more than 10 different nationalities, he explained. “We’re really diverse, so you hear a perspective that is not homogenous, you see a variety of exchanges and it’s just nice to listen to one another.”

One of the reasons Ongkiko came to CSOP was because of the conflict in the Philippines and the engagement of peacebuilders there. A treaty, for which he and others were strongly advocating, was signed between the Islamic group and the peoples of the government group in his area. But now the people are asking, “What’s next?” They are entering new territory, working with the government towards implementing the first federal state in the country.

“Definitely what is needed is to sustain the peace, because there are still players outside that are not happy about this . . . plus people are still living in fear, so there has to be concerted effort by all stakeholders to try to make sure peace is sustained.” Ongkiko hopes to design programs that will focus on these issues.

“I’m doing a lot of training and a lot of capacity building with different groups, so I hope to also integrate what I have learned [at CSOP] and the things that I’ve been doing.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Nicole Ternowesky

Nicole Ternowesky
Nicole Ternowesky

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

CSOP student uses course to enrich youth work

When Nicole Ternowesky first signed up for the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), she never imagined it would lead her to a summer job.

Ternowesky, 20, is a third-year student from Brandon, MB, majoring in Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). After enrolling in a course for the 2019 session of CSOP, she attended a dinner party over Christmas where she happened to meet someone who would be taking the same course at the summer peacebuilding school.

That person was Dwayne Dyck, Executive Director of Westman Youth for Christ (WYFC) in Brandon. Once they made the CSOP connection and started talking, one thing led to another and soon Ternowesky landed the position of Summer Student Mentor at WYFC.

She spent the summer working with youth facing homelessness. WYFC sets up youth with transitional housing in subsidized apartments and helps them apply for Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) to help them pay their rent. Then they create a personal development plan together, working to achieve goals like finishing their high school diploma, getting a job, and improving mental and physical health.

“Basically we just ask them, ‘What do you want to get out of this experience?’ . . . they decide and then we walk alongside them and provide support and friendship. And we try and let them know that no matter what they do, they always have the relationships,” she says. “It’s really fun, like I just hang out with youth all day and get to be their friend and connect with them.”

During her week at CSOP, Ternowesky took the course, Indigenous Perspectives on Salvation, Repentance, Peace, and Justice with Ray Aldred. He is a Cree man who is director of the Indigenous Studies Program at the Vancouver School of Theology and an ordained minister within the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada.

“I took the class because I am really interested in how Indigenous Christians are following Jesus in their own cultural way and I wanted to learn more about that,” says Ternowesky, who is Métis.

“It’s a really interesting class. I like the idea of incorporating Indigenous ceremonies into Christian worship. I like that he talks about how doing that actually enriches Christianity, because a lot of people are scared it threatens the integrity of the gospel, but actually it enriches our encounter with Christ.”

She appreciates how he invited everyone in the class into an Indigenous spirituality, even though many were not Indigenous, and encouraged people to experience Jesus in a new way. “Because as Indigenous people, the ceremonies and practices that we have are gifts, you know? We should be sharing them with people,” she says.

Ternowesky was excited to share what she learned with the youth at WYFC. “We have really deep faith conversations a lot of the time, so I’m really excited to bring what I’m learning back to them, because a lot of them are Indigenous,” she says. “I feel like it would be cool to help them be proud of who they are and make sure they know they don’t have to be one or the other, Christian or Indigenous—they can be both . . . now I feel like I’ll be better equipped to have that conversation.”

Changes to the 2020 Canadian School of Peacebuilding courses and schedule

Due to the ongoing travel restrictions and social distancing directives in place across North America in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, CMU’s Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) is announcing the following changes to its June 2020 courses.

The following three courses will be offered in online format only:

  • Leading in an Age of Polarization, with David Brubaker (Eastern Mennonite University). 
  • Does Religion Cause Violence, with William Cavanaugh (DePaul University)
  • Reconciling Stories: Indigenous Laws and Lands, with Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair (University of Manitoba) REVISED COURSE – this course may be of interest to participants originally registered for Indigenous Politics, Land and Globalization (Rauna Kuokkanen) and Dreaming of Kanata and Canada (Niigaan Sinclair).

The following four courses are cancelled:

  • Indigenous Politics, Land, and Globalization, with Rauna Kuokkanen
  • Active Bystander Training, with Joy Meeker
  • Trauma, Healing, and Reconciliation, with Kelly Bernardin-Dvorak
  • Dreaming of Kanata and Canada: Indigenous Graphic Novels and Reconciliation, with Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair

For more information please see the news release about changes to CSOP 2020.

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CSOP Participant Profile – S.M. Islam

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

From injustice to peace

CEO of human rights organization brings CSOP learning home

When S.M. Rafiqul Islam received an email from the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) advertising their 2019 program, he signed up for not one, but two courses.

Islam, 47, is from Bangladesh, where he is CEO of the Rural Mother and Child Health Care Society, a non-governmental, non-profit organization. Despite the name, the work of the 27-year-old organization is not limited to women and children. It works in all the major sectors of development in Bangladesh, including health, education, human rights, global peace, emergency response, and climate change.

They are also an accredited partner of the United Nations (UN), working to implement the UN agenda wherever they are able. “We’re working to make the globe a safer place for the next generation,” he said.

At his first week of CSOP, Islam took Peace Skills Practice with Natasha Mohammed, a community counsellor, mediator, and victim impact worker who has taught for almost two decades. “I learned a lot of things, because our course instruction is very fantastic and she has a lot of experience,” he said. “What I learn from her I can use in my practical life, in my personal life, in my community, among my office and my staff, in my program’s division.” He said he’ll be able to take his experiences at CSOP and use them as he trains others in peacebuilding and development work back home.

During his second week, he took Justice, Peacebuilding, and a Theology of Struggle with Dann Pantoja and Gordon Zerbe. Pantoja has worked as a pastor and started a peacebuilding institute with his wife in the Philippines, where he is a Mennonite Church Canada witness worker. Zerbe is a Professor of New Testament at Canadian Mennonite University and has taught and worked in the Philippines with Mennonite Central Committee.

Islam explained that violence is pervasive in his country, both at home and in the workplace. “In Bangladesh there is a great lack of peace . . . the peace in Bangladesh, it is an emergency.” He added that the government focusses only on development and not social justice, but that “without peacebuilding, no development is meaningful.” This is why peacebuilding and leadership training is so important.

He’s working on bringing this message to the 12,000 volunteers and 3,500 staff within his organization, many of whom are women and youth. “If we practice and send volunteers place to place, and they’re connecting the social leaders, political leaders, and community leaders, and counselling them about making peace, then I think that it could be good for the future.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Ha Na Park

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

“This school certainly builds a peacebuilder”

Minister inspired by the transformation CSOP created in herself and others

Ha Na Park enrolled in the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) when she witnessed firsthand the transformative impact it can have on people’s lives.

Park, 39, migrated from Korea to Canada in 2007 and now calls Winnipeg home. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada and currently serves as the minister at Immanuel United Church in Winnipeg, where she has worked for the last two years.

Her partner took a few CSOP courses in recent years, and she watched as every morning he got excited to go to class. “In the last course he took at CSOP, I saw real transformation,” she says. “He was challenged by the instructor when he asked a question and he really took the challenge seriously. I could see that challenge began to shift something . . . I could really see the change at home and in other things and relationships.”

He became more attentive and dedicated to dismantling his own patriarchal actions. She thought, “This school certainly builds a peacebuilder! I became very convinced that something great happens here.” She registered herself almost immediately.

For her first class at CSOP, Park took Trauma, Peacebuilding, and Resilience – Level 1, taught by Vicki Enns, Clinical Director of the Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute, and Wendy Kroeker, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU).

Park says she appreciated the diversity amongst the participants and how inclusive the environment was. “I have been so delighted to see how [the instructors] were so willing and able to really create this space for everyone to participate with truth and being fully themselves. Everyone has been encouraged to express their thoughts and questions without hesitance,” she says. “And the subject is exceptionally important and unique, linking the individual psychological trauma healing with justice aspects of peacebuilding.”

Park sees many ways in which she can apply the new knowledge she learned at CSOP in her faith context and is interested in learning more about how this kind of work is taking place outside the church. “I really hope that my learning from the course can change me and inform me in the lens of trauma so that I can more properly listen and share stories with everyone,” she says.

She is also absorbing her learning in a personal way. “I began to see my own lived experience through the lens of trauma, even though I don’t consider my life events as more classic trauma events. But for example, patriarchy can be slow, systemic trauma for some people. So I’m really taking this learning . . . to see where I am and it has been helping me in the process of healing too.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Bob Gilbert

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

Minister uses CSOP knowledge to resource church community

Bob Gilbert has been a minister in Manitoba for 24 years, and for the last several of those, the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) has played an important role in equipping him to serve his community.

Gilbert, 66, is the minister at Augustine United Church in Winnipeg, where he has served for the last seven years. It is an inclusive, affirming church that is active in seeking justice in its community and the world. He takes classes at CSOP as part of the continuing education opportunity his job provides him.

This year, his fourth time attending CSOP, he took Generous Dissent: Nonviolent Activism and Resistance with Dr. Emily Welty, member of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and director of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University in New York City.

“It’s great,” Gilbert says of his class. “Not only is the topic fascinating, but the readings she’s chosen are also interesting. She’s a really good teacher, conveying her topic with passion. She uses all different kinds of modalities and engages us.”

He first heard about CSOP from members of his church, some of whom had attended in the past. Now he’s bringing his learning back to that community. He took a course on Indigenous-settler relations, titled Reconciling Our Future: Stories of Kanata and Canada, with Dr. Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair a few years ago. As a class, with the guidance of Sinclair, they came to the conclusion that education and getting to know people face to face were key ways to proceed as settlers.

“That inspired me to take the invitation to have circles for reconciliation at our church, which is a grassroots movement which brings together Indigenous people and settlers,” Gilbert says. “They meet once a week for 10 weeks in a circle, and talk about issues that…stem from colonial policies and attitudes. A lot of our church people attend and have come to a very different place in their lives.”

Another of his courses motivated him to give a workshop on the Mennonite Church Canada resource, Wrongs to Rights: How Churches can Engage the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, at his church during Lent. “I come here partly for my own nurture and refreshment, but I also do it for what I can bring back to my faith community and my daily work with them.”

Gilbert is part of the Just Living group hosted by Augustine United Church, which meets monthly and is open to anyone, whether religious or not. They gather for fellowship and discuss different subjects, sometimes bringing in guest speakers. Two other participants from the group also took Dr. Welty’s course with Gilbert and together they plan to bring back their learning to the Just Living group, as well as the broader church.

“I’ve been really thinking that Christians need to begin to think seriously about non-violent action. That’s been on my mind for quite a while…climate change, some of the things that are happening in the world right now, if we’re going to affect change, this is the most effective way to do it. Not all of us are called to do it, but I’m hoping to excite and educate folks about what that would entail…going further than just petitions and letters and taking some risks.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Zina Hamu

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

Yazidi student finds hope in sharing stories at CSOP

When Zina Hamu entered the classroom for Trauma, Peacebuilding, and Resilience – Level 1, the course she was taking at the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) last June, she walked in with a very personal perspective.

Hamu, 23, is a survivor of the Yazidi genocide in northern Iraq.

She was in her last year of high school, hanging out with her friends and making goals for her future, hoping to be a pediatrician. Then in August of 2014, ISIS attacked her village. While their homes burned and people were being killed and abducted, she fled with her family and neighbours to the mountains. It took two days to get to safety, walking in 40-degree heat with no water or food. After almost two weeks, they arrived in a refugee camp, where she discovered that few people in her village had survived. More than five years later, people are still living in refugee camps, including her family.

In addition to the course on trauma, taught by Vicki Enns, Clinical Director of the Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute, and Wendy Kroeker, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), Hamu also took Making Music, War, and Peace with Dr. Svanibor Pettan, internationally renowned lecturer, researcher, and chair of the ethnomusicology program at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

While taking the first course, Hamu said, “It’s kind of heavy because it’s about trauma, but at the same time it’s very interesting, because we in the class, we international people, share our different stories and learn from each other. I’m also happy to share my story with them, and so we all can learn from each other.”

In the refugee camp, which held more than 3,500 families, she worked with women and children at a health centre and kindergarten. She was also a photographer, capturing not only the struggles of living in the camp, but also the rich tradition and culture of her Yazidi people.

She was told she could still take the final exams to graduate high school, but she didn’t see how she could possibly pass because she had no books. “There was nothing in my head but trauma. I felt like I was dead and there was nothing good left in life for us.” But the exams came, and she passed them all.

In 2017, she had the opportunity to go to LCC International University in Lithuania. It was at a photo exhibition put on by the university that she met Cheryl Pauls, President of CMU. Hamu received a scholarship to study at CMU as a war-affected student and is now in her second year of studying International Development Studies, wanting to help people who are suffering around the world and back home. “I get the chance to study here. I’m very grateful for it.”

It was in her classes that she heard about CSOP. She was intrigued, but it was only when she was immersed in the environment that she realized what she would gain from it. “Every person’s stories … they gave me a lesson to learn from it and apply to my life and other’s lives too. I’m very inspired about the knowledge they bring in the class and they are willing to build peace. Some of them talk about their projects they do to help the people and the work they do, so I think I can learn from their experiences and I can do something for my people, too.”

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CSOP Participant Profile – Yousuf Abdulaziz

By Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe

International human rights worker finds professional development at CSOP

Yousuf Abdulaziz is no stranger to peacebuilding and human rights work. He has worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and Save the Children in the Central African Republic.

Abdulaziz, 42, is originally from Sudan but moved to Egypt with his family. He now works with Save the Children in Iraq, leading the child protection program in the whole country. His program does everything from monitoring and reporting child rights abuses, psycho-social rehabilitation for children, and reunification with families.

But as he has worked in human rights, he has found that short-term emergency responses aren’t enough to help in the long-term picture. When he heard about the Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP) from a friend, he knew he had to take a course.

Abdulaziz took Peace Skills Practice with Natasha Mohammed, a community counsellor, mediator, and victim impact worker who has taught for almost two decades.

At first, he wasn’t sure if he was going to learn anything new, because many concepts in the first class were familiar. But by the next day, he knew he was wrong. For the rest of the week, he was learning new idea after new idea.

“Most people who work in areas of armed conflict like me, when we say peacebuilding and conflict resolution we are always thinking of armed conflict and people who are fighting,” says Abdulaziz. “But when I came here I discovered that it’s not only about that.” He learned that conflict can also be in your own personal life, between family and friends, and is affected by social and cultural elements.

“It’s amazing,” he says of the course. Around 75 percent of the material has a direct connection with his work. He especially appreciated when the course discussed social programming, because that’s currently part of the program Save the Children is running for children in Iraq, whether it’s spaces for kids to draw and play or programs for parents about positive parenting and discipline led by community facilitators.

During the week of the course, Abdulaziz had already started sharing his learning with his team in Iraq. “Now it’s not only a personal gain, but also I feel like the organization itself is going to gain from this course at CSOP.”

“I was telling myself really I’m regretting not attending this course before,” he says. “Can you imagine if I had this three or four years ago? It might make a lot of change in my life and in my career, which will of course have a positive impact on children in the areas where I’m working.”