Zedan

It’s been eight years since Zedan was forcibly displaced from Sinjar, northern Iraq; eight years of living in Khanke’s internally displaced persons’ camp. “Sometimes you feel that you will give up,” he says, but stresses that he is working on learning as much as possible to form a peaceful community.

His journey with JWL began with the Global English Language programme through which he feels he learned a lot and which encouraged him to be engaged within the community. The next step was the Peace Leader professional programme. “That course made me someone else, ready to face the world.”

Zedan remembers being rather impatient and lacking inner peace. This changed as he made his way through the course as well as through his experience as an interpreter for an organisation that supports Yazidi survivors who suffered at the hands of ISIS.

Realising just how much he learned about conflict and peace, and wishing to transfer this knowledge, enrolling in the Learning Facilitator programme was the logical next step. Having graduated from the programme, Zedan is now supporting new Peace Leader students as their onsite facilitator.

It is his firm belief that “a peace leader should make peace leaders, not followers,” that when you learn something and when someone helps you, you should pass it on. “Don’t run when you face difficulties. Face them and one way or another, you will resolve them.”

Pursuing studies and having dreams for the future is often hard for survivors but Zedan has a plan. Someday, he will open a learning centre and provide survivors with free lessons/lectures. There will be a time for healing and then “they will go study and make their dreams come true.”