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A "Reflection" on the First Week

Our Palestinian Vanilla Peace agent Mira about the first week, so far.



I cannot believe that its been already almost a week, A LOT happened during very few days; meeting a big group of interesting people, getting to know about many ideas, projects, ambitions out there. I think it is now clear for us all that we all share personal and more general objectives as participants in this course. We all want to develop our skills and knowledge expand our network yet a main concern remains situation back home. How can we contribute to change? Many suggestions could be given, yet I believe that big dreams always start small, and as we are not the only people working on media, freedom of expression, democracy or change maybe this meeting would help us grow our network of those looking for a change in the Arab region.

First day when we arrived, I was asked to be part of a collective interview conducted by a journalist from the Swedish News Agency, we were asked to talk about ourselves and our work, beside discovering that one of the people interviewed "Wael" from Egypt was one of the most famous if not "the" most famous blogger in Egypt -whom I happen to have previously seen on a documentary on Al Jazeera- I also discovered that I was accompanied by a feminist Journalist "Maha" and the younger journalist of the group who writes at Al Jazeera talk "Muhammad", suddenly my achievements in life; if I may call them so, seemed so little especially with the last two being couple of years younger than I am. But, in any case, since I have tried to convince myself for some time now that age is just a number, let's not get too far from what I initially wanted to point out. So, each of us basically talked enthusiastically about new media and change, I tended to always think that Westerners enjoy lecturing about democracy, probably because we (Arabs) have been distinguishing ourselves for quite some time now with what I call "political retarded-ness" or more generally RETARDED-ness; not sure that word exists but well.. it makes me laugh and think; aren't we actually so? I guess we are, on multiple levels in fact, but what I discovered that the west is not the only side enjoying theorizing about democratic solutions.. we could all do that, couldn't we? I think many; precisely, policy makers in this world do not understand or perhaps do not want to understand, that democratization does not really have a magic recipe and for a successful democratization to happen it needs to come from down to up .. at least this is how I see it.

We got to the point were we almost agreed that social and political change in the Arab world like anywhere are interconnected yet are slow and gradual, I don't think we can work on one exclusively while isolating the other, and so to change you need to educate, open the eyes and get people to question. And so, I really like the term that we have brought up on various occasions so far "think out of the box". As I expressed in the session of Ibn Rushd mosque many of us are sick of this traditional and unfortunately mainstreamed way of educating and thinking and we really need to start being more critical, and in that regard I am a little optimistic because we all know that Arab people are not really satisfied with their life conditions especially in terms of political liberties, but not only. We tend to find an excuse for ourselves; governments are so, the U.S is so and so and as much as this type of analysis leaves a space for interpretations it also does not and should not mean that we should stick too much to this passive way of thinking, things now are not the way they were ten or fifteen years ago, we should admit that, and control now is way harder than it was before, spreading the word is now an art and a technique and is no longer about paper, ink or pigeon... they cannot shoot the pigeon and F-16 can bombard buildings and bodies but not thoughts and beliefs, therefore lets all pass it on ..

A week has passed and we all look forward for the coming modules, and one more thing we also hope that by the coming few days we will get to know Stockholm from up as mush as we are now experts in its underground..

Tusbihun ala watan !

Wednesday 23:53 pm.

Vanilla Peace Agents :

Name : Mira
Code : 001

Mira is a Palestinian who just finished her masters degree in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies, her master thesis was on media and intercultural communication; the role it could play in bridging the gap between East and West.

Age : 26

Likes : nature, multicultural food, travelling and discovering people and places, and CHOCOLATE.

Name : Pernilla "Vanilla" Ahlsen
Code : 002

A writer who spends half of her time writing about art in Stockholm and half in Jerusalem writing about the Middle East.

Age : 28

Likes : Art, books, dinner parties, Jerusalem, writing, dresses, friends, my lap top, the ocean

Name : Nevine Lotfy

Code : 003

Nevine is a Training/Production coordinator, working with the Egyptian young people & some of the middle east young people. So passionate about Cinema, photography and music.

Age : 26

Dreaming to produce Media that will make real change in people one day .. she dreams of Peace in the Middle East and to write novels in front of an open fire in a small country house.

Name : Emad Nassif

Code : 004

Emad is working as journalist in el badeel daily newspaper in investigations department before this i used to work as a free lancer.

Likes : football ;music :traveling;reading and writing.

My dream : my personal dream is to study puplic relation in USA ;puplic dream i hope that no poor no war for all world.

Name : Nasry Esmat

Code : 005

A mentally retarded person who found his cure in work.. His ambitions kept growing till he became the slave you meet everyday.

Likes : Journalism

Monday : Surprising knowledge comes with more stress

How Familiar are you with Google? Do you think you mastered searching skills related to the father of all engines? .. Mark Comerford can definetly change your answer.

In the second module of YLVP 08 we were introduced to HyperIsland (the academy of young media innovators) in Stockholm.

Mark introduced us to new things about old stuff that we used to deal with every single day like google advanced searching tricks,saving files, managing time and making everything automated.

We were introduced to Tulsen restaurant where we gonna have our lunch everyday .. we had to learn about some silly and important stuff like check ins and check outs and a bunch of passwords to enter every single door!

As a group we entered one of these brain storming rooms to take some decisions including creating this blog.

It is not just the deadlines we are fighting against .. unfortunately influenza joined forces with all artificial circumstances to infect 3 of our group members .. another 2 members are fighting to avoid the infection!

At night .. we had a very pleasant experience visiting Stockholm main mosque .. we met Muslims who are not native Arabs.

it was really surprising to find how open minded they are and how they are better representatives of Islam than some people living in the Arab world.

Welcome to our group!

Welcome to Lejondals slott where our team is announced: Mira, Nevine, Pernilla, Hanna, Emad and Nasry.

In the light of candles we had our first meeting with our facilitator Sophie. On the way to Stockholm we practiced the team building skills we learned through the last 2 days.
It was a real chance to explore each others abilities and super powers :)

We know we have alot of work to do in the next few days but we are ready to deliver!