Our Peace Sisters and Brothers lead major event for #16DaysOfActivism

Over the past few months, our Peace Sisters and Brothers have been on a real journey, becoming trained as grassroots mediators and peace advocates.

As a result of the project, they have been leading their own initiatives to benefit the wider community, and this week held an important public event to tie in with #16DaysOfActivism.

Held at Duhok University, the event was designed to raise awareness of gender-based violence, and promote the idea that we must all work together to protect women and girls and improve their basic rights.

Putting their new skills in public speaking and communications to great use, the participants gave an informative talk on gender-based violence, highlighting the powerful stories of victims, while they had also prepared a video on the topic. Beautiful candles, gifts and crafts made by some of the women were also on display.

The day was attended by more than 250 students, teachers and guests from Erbil and Baghdad, as well as representatives from the university and the Directorate of Combating Violence against Women (DCVAW) in Duhok.

Meanwhile, a speech by the Director of DCVAW gave updated GBV statistics for the Duhok area, as well as details on the organisation’s efforts to support survivors.

Our project is funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Government, and has been training 50 women and men to help restore harmony within fractured communities. The project has focused on conflict resolution techniques, women empowerment, non-violence, cooperation and integration, plus confidence-building techniques.

As you can imagine, standing up in a packed university lecture hall to deliver such important messaging is far from easy, and seeing our Peace Sisters and Brothers evolve and grow in this way means so much to us. We’re very thankful to everyone who has been involved, and really hope we’ll be able to facilitate more of these kinds of projects next year and beyond.

 Check out more photos here…