Focus

Welcome to the May 2007 edition of Voice Newsletter. This month, Voice issues a special welcome to the 300 new Action Partners who have just joined the OIYP 2007-2010 program. In this edition we'll be looking at the personal journeys of the OIYP Action Partners. for 2007 action partners this is part of the beginning of a journey, whereas for our 2000 and 2004 Action Partners, it is a continuation.....

'there is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.'

                                                                                               Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom

 For many Action Partners in the OIYP network, participation in the program marks the first major physical journey away from their home country and perhaps is event the first time that they have left their own village or town. Some will travel the relatively small distance from regional Australia to take part in OIYP Kaleidoscope 2007, whereas others will traverse great distances, many thousands of kilometres, to come together for the event. People's journeys will include all manner of modes of transport: by walking, riding motor bikes, the back of trucks, trains, busses and packed into planes to travel to be part of the program.

Another type of journey that Action Partners will go on will be a personal inner journey of personal change and development.

Inner journeys involve the exploration of the self, as individuals review their growth and development in the light of experiences which challenge and inspire them. In sharing these stories through Voice newsletter and the networks, we encourage readers to reflect on the ways these inner journeys provide new insights and understanding of their communities, the world and themselves.

 What is personal reflection? Reflection can be understood to be the process by which we all learn from our experiences. We aim to encourage an environment of reflective learning through OIYP, and know that for deep learning to occur it is essential that one has the chance to think clearly about what you are doing and about the experience that you are having. This not only helps you to become more aware of the situation you have experienced but also helps us think about what we might do in the future.

Some good ways to stay reflective throughout your learning journey are to keep a journal or blog about your experience. You might like to write a letter to yourself at the outset to return to later on to see how far you have come. Perhaps you don't want to go it alone? Why not talk with atrusted friend or mentor? They may be more objective and will know lots about you that you never did!

The May edition of Voice newsletter brings to you the personal reflection of some of our 2004 Action Partners. Vahid Nobahare updates us on his work with an HIV/AIDS education project for youth and women in the Iran with the Lord of the Rings Project. He notes that this is the first peer education program in Iran that trains and recruits Injecting Drug Users as peer educatiors. In Keeping Education Safe in a Conflict Zone - our feature this month- Nout Mosawy from Iraq writes about the Baghdad Medical Students Forum and innovative ways they are using education to encourage sharing amongst students and support for theri learning in an environment where it is easy for young people to feel isolated and alone. 3 2004 Action Parners, from very different countries- PNG, Venezuela and Canada - provide probing insights into their particiaption in OIYP exploring both the challenges and successes of their work.

I hope that you will find the stories that they share to be inspiring as they describe the personal journeys that they have taken.

May Feature

A space that war cannot touch: Keeping education safe in a conflict zone

Action Partner Nour Mosawyexamines how a group of young people have worked creatively together to protect the right to education for students in Iraq.  She tells how her community at Baghdad University has through utilizing the internet made resources available to enhance and support learning for students in the Medicine course. Check out the project at http://kad.freehostia.com/bcmhp/default.htm

Going back three years ago to Sydney July 2004, when my action plan came out of the urge to "get involved", I can still remember the application of IYP 2004 and how it attracted me by stating on the front page “Want to make change?" 

With this main idea in mind I spent 2005 trying to find a way to mobilize myself, to be active, and to get more involved in my community issues. My community is the Baghdad University of Medicine environment in Baghdad, Iraq since war didn't leave us much space to meet people aside from our college or work places. 

It is unsafe to move from house to house or to go to restaurants or even spend much time at college, we go to college for lectures, to do our exams and we hardly stay later than one o'clock in the afternoon! 

The story is not about only a project, it started when the Medical students in Baghdad University wanted more space to talk, interact and display our ideas of change in our University.  One of our colleagues Yezen Ali, who is a team member began by starting a Yahoo Group, where we discussed ideas to have our own place to interact. This brought another student Kadhem Emad, whose main interest is networking and web designing in addition to his Medical career, Kadhem designed a new website to be our Forum, Baghdad College of Medicine Forum, www.thebcmf.com  This is an important step to make the learning community more interactive as there has not yet been an official website created for the Medicine course.

As a further step to support learning for students in the Medical College, I have been working to make the Medical Handbooks more readily available for 6th year students to make use of during their clinical attachments through a small grant from the OIYP grants program.

It was the space where I thought war could not touch, and not affect.  To be able to source original copies of medical handbooks for students to read, was for me an uplifting action for students to keep going during this hard time.  At the same time, I decided to make use of our Forum, to appoint workshops, extra homework, and news regarding the project, so that we can promote our action in the Forum, and bring attention to what students can do. 

It wasn't hard to make a team, in fact bringing committed people together was one of the easiest things associated with the project.  It was wonderful to collaborate with my colleagues and community in different ways, outside of existing friendships, as part of this project team with the aim to bring goodness to all.  This was the soul of our work, that we all wanted to bring goodness for our community and this joint aim made it easy to listen to each other and share our thoughts. Through a mutual culture of respect, we work together to get the voices of everyone heard. 

Yet, the story does not end here. Almost all of the project members have other different activities and lead busy lives outside of their study commitments. Kadhem,founder of the forum and administrator, recently participated in youth workshops in Egypt. And others on the team are equally busy- Yezen is the Moderator of the Forum; Tina is attending workshops in Amman-Jordan, and is involving other team members in activities and workshops with other organizations outside the country;  Ausama participated in Chat the Planet show Hometownbaghdad, and is a new OIYP action partner in the 2007-2010 program; and Mohammed Jaafar and Farah are interested in issues of women’s empowerment. 

I believe all of us, who get the chance to help and be empowered, we are sharing this chance with someone else who is waiting to get the opportunity to help. And the circle goes on. 

I am now interested in trying to do this: to connect us, young people in Iraq to young people around the world. Iraqi youth do not currently have the chance to socialize, they are being isolated in this war zone, living out each day's challenges with no electricity or water and are facing the bad news of friends or relatives losing their lives everyday.  It would be great if they have the chance to see other young people, to re-energize themselves and to keep the commitment to change going on and on.

Nour Mosawy

OIYP 2004 Action Partner, Iraq.