In Cambridge November 9-Understanding Syria

MONDAY: Understanding Syria

When: Monday, November 9, 2015, 7:00 pm

Where: First Church in Cambridge - Hastings Room • 11 Garden St • Harvard T • Cambridge

What is really happening in Syria?  The mainstream media in our country are full of one-sided propaganda and not much help.  Come to a MAPA event to hear from two Syrians, Wafaa Arbash and Ali Aljundi, now in the US, and MAPA board member Jeff Klein.
Wafaa Arbash is a Syrian graduate student in Development and Peace at Brandeis University with a focus on being an effective agent of social change and rights-based development in complex humanitarian settings like my country. She volunteered in Syria for more than 5 years in social development programs where she spearheaded several projects to empower local citizens, increase their leadership skills and provide refugee advocacy. With Syrian Arab Red Crescent, she planned and implemented children’s activities to help them heal from trauma. During the civil war in Syria, she worked with local organizations where she was a trainer. In the training, providing workshops that included people from different perspectives, some supporting the government, others against. Through sharing their experience, she helped them create nonviolent initiatives in their local community. Wafaa is MAPA’s Membership Outreach Coordinator.
Ali Aljundi, a Syrian refugee, civil activist and project officer at Oxfam America, focuses his work on peacebuilding and empowering the Syrian civil society. Before leaving Syria in 2012, Ali participated in establishing a local NGO in his home district and helped in securing funds for sustainable community empowerment projects. He contributed also to launching the Syrian NGO’s platform. Ali worked on youth employment and career development through his profession at United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA). Ali holds a B.A. in economics from Damascus University and a M.A. in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University. Read his story

Jeff Klein is a Massachusetts Peace Action board member who has traveled widely in the Middle East, including Syria.  Read a recent article.  A retired machinist and union activist, he worked at GE in Lynn and for the Mass Water Resources Authority on Deer Island, where he was president of his local union for ten years. Since 2003 he has been active with Dorchester People for Peace in opposing US wars abroad and promoting social justice at home, and edits the weekly newsletter DPP Update. He is a member of MAPA’s Palestine/Israel Working Group as well as its Middle East Working Group. He speaks regularly about the Israel-Palestine conflict in schools, churches, mosques, community and peace organizations, has appeared on local TV and radio.
Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action

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