July 15th:
I've just begun the epic battle many wage: willing the brain to return from the far reaches of vacationland. I feel like I'm exercising forgotten muscles after enjoying the freedom of desert wandering, getting lost in a good fiction and red sea snorkeling while on hiatus from work for five weeks. But now, after a few days there's something familiar about this PPIC-Work business again. I have fresh energy and enthusiasm for work. And hamd'allah the next break isn't far from sight as well!! (Hurray for more friends and family visiting from Canada in August and September!!)
July 31st:
Oops, two weeks later this post was still languishing in the draft bin... guess my reflective capacities were really not ready to function alongside the work ones. In my defense I haven't really been 'home' much... alas, work travels to Ain Sukhna for a staff training and to Aswan for a Children's Networking event. =) But now I'm ready to sit down and tell a tale or two from June and July. And then we'll wander back to PPIC-Work and the Cairo life again.
First things first - let's talk about refugees.
If you want to learn about refugee issues it seems that Cairo is one of THE places to come. The American University of Cairo has an incredible Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program, and they also offer short summer courses on a variety of topics related to refugees/asylum seekers/internally displaced persons. I feel really fortunate... I was able to participate in two of these courses during the first two weeks of my vacation, and was thoroughly inspired by the content and professors.
The first course was on "Addressing the Protection of Refugee Women and Girls" with Dr. Eileen Pittaway from the University of New South Wales... a long term researcher and practitioner of refugee issues and gender programming. Dynamite! Then came "Meeting the Psycho-Social Needs of Refugees" with Dr. Nancy Baron. She also brought an incredible wealth of development and social work experience and an incredible grounding in community psychology and rights-based approaches to research and programming. And of course there was an incredible group of participants in both sessions. Hailing from around 12 countries each week, and representing refugee and asylum seeking communities, idps, and service providers in both camps and urban communities, we shared rich discussions during class and learned a lot about one anothers' cultures and lives in between. Some of the stories and realities shared were very heavy... the extent to which human beings are experiencing rights violations is incredibly disturbing/frustrating/saddening... but also inshallah moving us to act in our local communities!!
Speaking of which, here's a memo that some of us course-mates sent to the UNHCR for Ex-Com 2008 care of Dr Pittaway. A first step of hopefully many more as we work to support positive change here.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
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