Thirty-four Peace Fellows are volunteering this summer in 21 countries or territories with community-based partners of The Advocacy Project (AP). AP issues a weekly digest of their blogs.

 

Highlights:

 

Amputee Learns to Walk Again in Jordan
Bosnian Women Teach Lesson in Flexibility
Bedouins: Israel's Invisible Citizens
Peruvians Confront Dual History of Suffering
Friendships Key to Business in Malaysia
Kosovar Woman Fight Human Trafficking
Wastepickers Represented at Exhibition in Delhi
Pleas for a Clean Nairobi
Religion and Feminism Clash in Palestine
Building the Roma Movement in the Czech Republic

 

Excerpts:

 

Amputee Learns to Walk Again in Jordan
Krystal Sirman (George Washington University) is working with the Landmine Survivors Network-Jordan (LSN-JO) in Amman, Jordan.
"Although this was a very personal moment for him, Ali wanted me and Shireen (his social worker), two women, as well as Ahmed, to come into the room and watch his first attempts at walking since his amputation. I was nervous at first, feeling a little awkward and embarrassed. But as soon as I saw him standing there, gripping the parallel bars with all his might, his arms and remaining leg shaking from the strain of holding himself up, with the biggest grin spread across his face, all that anxiety fell away and I smiled, laughed even, and held back the tears of joy that were threatening to escape."

 

Bosnian Women Teach Lesson in Flexibility
Shweta Dewan (Columbia University) is promoting the Srebrenica Memorial Quilt with the Bosnian Family (BOSFAM) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"She was chased from Srebrenica herself, in house slippers, and had nothing when she left. From her entire life, she has six photos. If she were able to get anything back, it would be her pictures. Through all this, she tells me it's important to be flexible, because we never know what will happen to us. War was the last thing she expected, and it happened, and now, she says anything's possible. At the end of the day, she always repeated, we need to be able to live with ourselves."

 

Bedouins: Israel's Invisible Citizens
Rianne van Doeveren (Leiden University) is working with the Alternative Information Center in Palestine.
"More than 76,000 Bedouins who are living on their ancient lands in more than 45 unrecognized villages are seen as illegal squatters and often referred to as 'invisible citizens'. They are denied services, paved roads, public transportation, sewage, often even water resources, electricity and the permission to built any sort of housing. They also lack a local government and the right to vote and be elected to local office."

 

Peruvians Confront Dual History of Suffering
Ash Kosiewicz (Georgetown University) is working with the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) in Lima, Peru.
"The exhumation of the largest mass grave found in Peruvian history in Putis in May and the final Christian burial of those who lost their lives at La Cantuta in July place one tragedy from each historical narrative side-by-side. Instead of being separated by 18 years, 14 hours in bus, and the soaring Andes, the relatives of those killed in Putis and La Cantuta appear only pages apart in local newspapers, connected by mutual suffering. The former speak Quechua as their first language, the latter Spanish. Do Peruvians see both as Peruvians, or do they still see indigenous peoples as 'the other?'"

 

Friendships Key to Business in Malaysia
Ola Duru (Georgetown University) is working with eHomemakers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"The most amazing thing about Foong Yee I hear from the staff is the change they have seen in the past four years. eHome has been more than an income-generating activity for her. The program has given her the opportunity to grow as an individual. She is an artist, a friend, a leader, and a stronger woman. I have learned that what Foong Yee appreciates most about her time with eHome is the friendships she has built. She once told the staff 'Friends are important because they can help each other.' And after the last two months here, I couldn't agree more."

 

Kosovar Woman Fight Human Trafficking
Nicole Slezak (Georgetown University) is advocating for women's rights with the Kosova Women's Network in Prishtina, Kosovo.
"This summer KWN was invited to participate and its recommendations were included in the National Action Plan. KWN is very pleased with this breakthrough and the inclusion of viewpoints from within Kosova's civil society. KWN is working closely with the Agency for Gender Equality and the Women's Safety and Security Initiative (WSSI) on the issue of human trafficking and development of the Anti-Trafficking Plan."

 

Wastepickers Represented at Exhibition in Delhi
Mackenzie Berg (University of Denver) is working with informal waste recyclers at the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group in Delhi, India.
"I was excited to see the booth put together, and even though it was cramped, it seemed to draw many people as they walked around the exhibition floor... The members of Chintan who had been hired to staff the waste management for the two days kept stopping by to look shyly at the images, recognizing the name and the fact that this was a booth essentially about and for them. For the last time, I wish so much that I could speak more than five phrases in Hindi, because it would have been so great to speak with them and get their reactions."

 

Pleas for a Clean Nairobi
Kristina Rosinsky (University of Maryland) is teaching photography to disadvantaged youth with the Undugu Society of Kenya.
"Since all of my students have experience living on the streets or in the informal settlements, they know quite a bit about the need for a clean environment. They have seen babies die of cholera due to dirty water, they have seen older children playing in and around sewage, and have lived next to makeshift dump sites that serve as breeding grounds for malaria and other diseases. If you are rich enough, you can afford to live in the clean suburbs with sanitation systems, but for the poor, Nairobi is very dirty city."

 

Religion and Feminism Clash in Palestine
Hannah Wright (Bristol University) is working with the Women's Affairs Technical Committee in Ramallah, Palestine.
"Fadwa refers to a campaign, waged by Hamas during the first intifada of the late 1980s, against women who refused to wear the headscarf. 'They threw at us vegetables and eggs and so on, to force us to wear those scarves, but before Oslo we were very empowered. We put an end to this. But they were clever enough to use the mosques and so on to influence others through tradition and religion to push them towards having scarves.'"

 

Building the Roma Movement in the Czech Republic
Colby Pacheco (UC San Diego) is working on Romani rights with the Dzeno Association in Prague, the Czech Republic.
"Over the last 15 years in Roma ghettos, people continue to ask how papers will improve my life. They want to see actions, not declarations. It is very slow or no progress... We must also overcome the question of 'why give power to this movement', and the perception of how to implement human rights. The answer is that the power is in Roma ghettos, not in Strousburg or Brussles."