On July 16, 2019, a conference on “Gender-Based Violence against Women in Jordan: Rethinking Social, Legal, and Healthcare Services” was held at the University of Jordan. This one-day conference was organized by Dr. Tayseer Abu Odeh (Sylff fellow 2007, University of Jordan), with the support of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant.

Abu Odeh, second from right, moderating Panel Four of the conference.

Among the prominent Jordanian and other figures invited as speakers included Minister of Justice Bassam Talhouni; former Minister of Culture and a leading human rights lawyer Asma Khader; Jordanian Senator Taghreed Hikmet, who was the first woman judge in Jordan and the first woman judge at the International Criminal Tribunal from an Arab country; former Senator Raeda Qutob, who served as secretary general for the Higher Population Council and the National Council for Family Affairs; keynote speaker Asmahan Wadi, a consultant and researcher at the Arab State Regional Office of UNFPA Palestine; and Secretary General of the Jordanian National Commission for Women in Jordan Salma Nims.

The auditorium was packed with students and professionals from such sectors as law, civil society, healthcare, government, and academia. They engaged in lively and in-depth discussions on practical measures to stop violence against women.

The impact of the conference will hopefully continue to be felt long after the event, leading eventually to fundamental changes in Jordanian society. Congratulations to Abu Odeh on organizing this important forum with so many illustrious participants, and we look forward to receiving and uploading his report on the website soon.

The audience waits for the start of the conference at the Rum Auditorium of the University of Jordan.

In this series, the final presentations of all 20 participants of Sylff Leaders Workshop are introduced as five news articles (with links to the summaries of four fellows each).

The spring session of Sylff Leaders Workshop 2018-19 was held from April 7 to 14, 2019, in Beppu, Oita, with the generous support of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. It brought together the 20 Sylff fellows from 20 countries—selected from among 114 applicants—who had participated in the fall session in Sasayama. The workshop was aimed at deepening fellows’ understanding of differences in values and perspectives and held on the topic of the “Future of Food Production in 2030.”

The participating fellows made final presentations during the closing session on April 11 covering one or more of the following topics: (1) self-introduction, (2) changes in values, perspectives, or ideas experienced during the course of the two workshop sessions, (3) how the world is likely to change by 2030, and (4) the kind of leader you see yourself as being now or aspire to become in 2030.

This article introduces the presentations of the following four fellows:

(Clockwise from upper left) Stefan Buchholz, Ayo Chan, Eleni Konstantinou, and Evgeny Kandilarov.

Stefan Buchholz
Ayo Chan
Evgeny Gerchev Kandilarov
Eleni Konstantinou

The Sylff Association Secretariat is pleased to announce two recent recipients of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) award. SLI supports Sylff fellows’ initiatives to change society for the better with awards of up to US$10,000.

The two winners, chosen from among many applicants, are Sennane Gatakaa Riungu, a visa processing officer for the Australian High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya, and Shangrila Joshi, a faculty member at the Evergreen State College in Washington, United States.

Riungu’s project seeks to provide capacity building and agribusiness training for community members in Maara constituency, Kenya—her home community—to equip them with the tools and information needed to develop agricultural business enterprises. Aside from her professional work at the Commission, she has been engaged in empowering her home community with others for over 10 years by utilizing their vast networks outside the community.

Transplanting tomato seedlings in Kenya.

In 2013, she implemented her first SLI project aimed at providing basic professional development skills for community youths (see https://www.sylff.org/news_voices/13125/). Her second SLI project is a scaled-out version of the initiative that focuses more on providing practical knowledge and skills so that the community can become financially self-supporting.

Joshi will hold workshops and a forum in Nepal, her home country, in August. She will serve as a facilitator to give forest users a better understanding of climate mitigation mechanisms such as REDD+ and lead discussions on issues of fairness, equity, and justice in the implementation of REDD+.

Local women of a forest community in Nepal.

She plans to document the views and ideas of the participants so that such mechanisms will be implemented in socially just and equitable ways. She was inspired to organize the project through multiple research field visits to Nepal, which aroused a passion for her to make a real-world impact by utilizing her professional knowledge as a researcher of climate justice and climate policy.

The Sylff Association Secretariat is excited about helping fellows put their enthusiasm and ideas into action for the betterment of their home communities. Congratulations to both recipients on winning the award. The two projects will be carried out over the coming months, and reports will be posted on this website.

We are looking forward to supporting many more social initiatives that can lead to positive change in society.

Women, Mobility and Incarceration by Jadavpur fellow Rimple Mehta has become a widely discussed book in the Indian media. Published by Routledge, it is an account of Bangladeshi women who have been imprisoned in India for entering the country illegally and sheds light on the plight of female prisoners, who are often “invisibilised and incarcerated.”

Firstpost

https://www.firstpost.com/india/invisibilised-and-incarcerated-once-migrants-in-search-for-better-futures-bangladeshi-women-now-languish-in-jail-6879031.html

The Indian Express

https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/rimple-mehta-bangladesh-migrants-women-sexuality-the-invisible-people-nrc-5689240/?fbclid=IwAR3eHD73BNwzsTob9iUj-zJcJ5KtgTtLrsekvbkyZo8MulTuJLEGeSXTm0o

Dr. Mehta, who received a Sylff fellowship from Jadavpur University, is now an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Science, India. While at Jadavpur, she was granted a Sylff Research Abroad award to conduct research in Hungary. She also recently organized a Sylff Leadership Initiatives workshop to improve conditions faced by women prisoners in India.

A Workshop organized by Rimple Mehta (right) with a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant. Practitioners, scholars, and activists were invited to discuss the plight of women prisoners in India.

The Sylff Association secretariat is happy that Mehta has made use of Sylff support programs to advance her career, and that her decade-long work is now being broadly recognized by society.