For this wrap-up episode we've switched sides of the microphone to interview our host for the last 39 episodes, Ian Quick. (With thanks to Sam Meikle for taking over interviewing duties.)He talks about his formative experiences in the development & conflict management sectors, and why oral history felt like a meaningful contribution at this point i…

"The only ethical way of doing this research is to stay involved in a profound manner, & to maintain these friendships and relationships."Judith Verweijen is a researcher who has spent a decade-plus interviewing soldiers and militias in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.We talk through what her process looks like, what men under arms actuall…

Salma Ben Aissa Braham is a Tunisian humanitarian professional, and currently Country Director for the IRC in the Central African Republic.She spent half of her career (so far!) in her home country, and was entering her prime working years around the time of the 2011 revolution.We talk about that, naturally. We go on to discuss how she's approached…

Josep is a career humanitarian who's spent 20+ years with UNHCR working with refugees, and on forced displacement.But alongside there's something a bit unusual. That twigged for me personally when we met a few years back in Central Asia -- and he started speaking in Tajik to a local community, despite never having worked in the region.It turned out…

Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou is Director of the Politics and Governance Programme at the Overseas Development Institute. Past work has included academic posts, several development NGOs, and the OECD's Development Assistance Committee.With this in mind, it's interesting that the recurring theme of this conversation is a rather ambivalent relationship with…

Polly Mackenzie is CEO at Demos, a cross-party think tank in the United Kingdom. She's also worked at the centre of government within the 2010-15 coalition, and run a charity focusing on money and mental health.In the current fractious political environment Demos looks at big challenges like wealth inequality, "building back" after covid-19, and so…

Do you want to be a better parent to your kids? Listen to Pastor Michael Rodriguez share about how you can take one step forward as a parent. You'll learn how to think about parenting and what you can do this week.بقلم Sam and Dalton

Do you wonder what your purpose in life is? Listen to Paul Sohn share about how you can take one step forward in finding your calling this week. Paul Sohn is a best selling author (Quarter Life Calling), blogger and speaker. He unpacks what is calling and how you can help find it from the Caller, God.https://www.samuelyoon.com/?p=1672…

Dao X. Tran is Managing Editor of Voice of Witness, which develops oral histories and education programs to amplify the voices of people impacted by injustice.Recent projects have included the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, indigenous Americans, and settlement of refugees in Appalachia. (You can find all their projects at voiceofwitness.org .)We sta…

How do you live out God's call to purity? Listen to Timothy Attek, Executive Director of Breakaway Ministries in Texas share about how you can take one step forward against pornography. He shares a profound way to tackle against these desires. Timothy leads one of the largest college ministries at Texas A&M.…

Listen to Chip Dean, pastor at Liberty Live Church in Virgina, share how you can take one step forward in maximizing your mornings. He shares practical ways to have a purpose driven morning. You don't want to miss this.بقلم Sam and Dalton

Kumekucha is a program to help people process conflict and trauma, and to craft new narratives for themselves.It’s running at the community level in coastal Kenya and Nairobi, for people affected by police brutality, by gang violence, and a whole range of adverse personal circumstances.(I strongly recommend checking out the Green String Network’s c…

Listen and watch Pastor AC, Campus Pastor at Saddleback Church in Los Angeles, share how we can love our neighbors especially our African American brothers and sisters. He shares practical tips and ways to take one step forward in loving others.Watch on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qirM4EMsAk&feature=youtu.behttps://www.samuelyoon.com/…

Listen to Pastor Eric Saunders, Campus Pastor for the Arlington Campus at McLean Bible Church in Washington D.C., share how to take one step forward in racial unity. Our country is divided and needs unity, healing, justice and reconciliation. Pastor Eric shares some practical steps on what you can do today.…

Wondering how you can improve your online small group experience? Listen to Kevin Lee, Online Small Group Pastor at Saddleback Church, share some suggestions and things to help you during this crisis. He'll give some insights and things to think through for your online small group experience.بقلم Sam and Dalton

Kate Moger is Regional Vice-President for the Great Lakes region at the International Rescue Committee. She's based in Nairobi, although currently that’s in flux due to COVID-19.We start with her rather interesting route into the sector by way of a dubious Russian travel agency, some traumatic early experiences, and how and where this turned around…

(Bonus coronavirus lockdown episode)Ahmed Famau Ahmed is one of the facilitators that works with the “Healing the Uniform” initiative that we discussed in episode #031.But he’s not a career professional. Instead he came into this because of his own history of being arrested, interrogated, and mistreated by the police.In this conversation he talks a…

Gitahi Kanyeki is a 36-year veteran of the Kenya National Police Service. His career spans operations against cattle rustlers in Turkana, to extraordinary violence in Nairobi after the 2008 elections, to internal action against serious misconduct.That history has entailed more than anyone’s fair share of traumatic experiences, both for him and for …

Wangui Kimari is an urban anthropologist, currently affiliated with the African Centre for Cities.She’s done a range of interesting things but this conversation focuses on work in her home town of Nairobi—and in particular the Mathare area, which if you know the city is often labelled as a slum or sort of den of iniquity.The recurring theme is the …

بقلم Ian D. Quick

بقلم Ian D. Quick

بقلم Ian D. Quick

Preeti Thapa has led community justice and conflict transformation programs in her native Nepal for about sixteen years, working with the Asia Foundation.That experience spans an extraordinarily turbulent period -- the tail end of the Maoist insurgency, a drawn-out and highly contentious transition to multi-party politics, a transformative new cons…

Marc is a journalist who has developed a number of graphic novels with people in extraordinarily tough situations. These include kids affected by conflict in the Central African Republic; returned combatants of the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda; and people targeted for witchcraft in Nigeria. (You can find his work at http://www.marcelli…

Wale is acting senior director for the governance technical unit within the International Rescue Committee. He works to protect the rights of people affected by crises to influence the political issues that matter to them. (Background link for more on this: https://www.rescue-uk.org/outcome/power.)We talk about getting people to think intelligently…

David is the Africa editor for the Financial Times. In January 2019 his team broke a story on massive fraud in presidential and parliamentary elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.The reporting was impressive for its depth, based on the systematic review of leaked electoral data. It was also striking because it was so unusual, following…

Gemma pivoted away from a career in programme management and human rights advocacy to undertake a PhD in how we think about stress and meaning in the aid sector.That done, she is now an independent consultant and facilitator on how aid agencies can become more healthy, inclusive and caring work spaces (blog: http://gemmahouldey.com/).With this in h…

Kathryn managed monitoring & evaluation for cross-border “stabilisation" programmes in Syria over the last five years (working with the development consultancy Integrity).These initiatives aimed to support functioning services and local governance in opposition-held areas, and to check the influence of extremist groups, in parallel with diplomatic …

Rabih Omar is a proud citizen of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city, and has worked there on humanitarian and peacebuilding challenges for his whole career.We talk in depth about his experience working for different international organisations that have come to his city, what foreign “experts” tend to get wrong, and how he keeps his motivation up despi…

Roshan is co-founder of the Amani Institute, which supports talent development for the social sector. Over the last seven years it has graduated some 450 students from its hubs in Nairobi, Bangalore, and Sao Paolo.We talk about the merits of coming from an emerging market perspective when talking about social innovation, the gaps that Amani sees in…

A short one to share some reflections on the first year of the podcast, and talk about where we're going next. (Including a name change!)We've had a wide range of people on so far -- human rights defenders, community organisers, clinicians, aid workers, and more. I share some of the moments that have really stuck with me, and talk about what I thin…

Nick van Praag founded and runs an organisation called Ground Truth Solutions. They work with people affected by crises to get their feedback and perspectives on emergency response.In practice this means door-to-door surveys, over time, of how people feel about the timeliness, quality and fairness of humanitarian service provision. This is shared w…

Hani al Rstum is a Syrian living in Lebanon’s second city of Tripoli, and the conductor for the SADA playback theatre troupe. They engage with communities affected by serious conflict, with the goal of recognising and affirming life experiences, and opening dialogue.Playback draws on psychodrama therapy, and Hani himself is a psychotherapist. He “c…

Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city, has experienced considerable violence ever since the end of the national civil war in 1990.But this escalated dramatically with the onset of the Syrian civil war. Pitched neighbourhood-level fighting led up to the shock car-bombing of the al-Taqwa and al-Salam mosques in 2013.The central government responded with an …

Christine Williamson runs a consultancy firm called Duty of Care International, and has spent twenty years in human resources management in the aid world.It’s well-known that this is a very difficult area. The sector puts large numbers of people into tough operating environments, with a tiny fraction of the support that’s available for diplomatic o…

Jean-Paul is part of the generation that was fundamentally shaped by the Lebanese civil war, but had no responsibility for it. In his words, when he left the country in 2006 after the brief and calamitous war with Israel, he never wanted to come back.While abroad, however, he found a sense of agency and possibility. He did come back, and founded an…

Assaad is best-known in Lebanon for an open letter in 2000, in which he apologised for what he’d done with the Lebanese Forces, a prominent Christian militia responsible for its share of atrocities.This has been followed by nearly twenty years of philanthropic work. Much of it has been in partnership with other former combatants, through the organi…

Dete is a researcher and activist whose work revolves around in-depth, interview-based research with people detained for terrorism offences, and their families. This includes special focus on women as both partners and protagonists.The results are used to inform dialogue with the Indonesian government and its international partners, along with targ…

Rufa Cagoco-Guiam is an anthropologist based in General Santos City. Over the course of several decades she has worked on dozens of peacebuilding and development initiatives in the wider southern Philippines.Her perspective cuts across the usual disciplinary lines, with Rufa's CV including a lengthy academic record; stints as a newspaper editor-in-…

“OBB” is a Nigerian public health professional and advocate who works with the LGBT population, drug users, sex workers, and the HIV-positive. Over the last 10 years he has been managing a large program for these key population groups, for Heartland Alliance International.The work can only be described as a calling, in an often very difficult conte…

Marie-Rose founded ESPWA not long after the 2010 earthquake which killed some 200,000 people. This led into eight years of intensive support to community-driven planning, with particular focus on the Grand ‘Anse region.We discuss the difficulties of building an inclusive platform in rural areas with little infrastructure and the usual rivalries; he…

Teame teaches at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol, and has consulted on education policy in a range of different countries.He is an Eritrean who obtained political asylum in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, completed his PhD there, and has been extraordinarily active in supporting refugees and international student…

Alex is an independent researcher who strives to build better bridges between the global North and South, promoting constructive dialogue and putting power imbalances higher on the agenda than they currently sit. This is a tough ask in a sector that is pretty much defined by imbalances — between those who pay, and those who are supposed to benefit.…

Mario is a clinician and psychotherapist, who first started working with Guatemalan immigrants to the USA in the early 1990s.These days he’s clinical supervisor at the Marjorie Kovler Centre in Chicago (https://www.heartlandalliance.org/kovler/), a part of the Heartland Alliance. He works with people claiming political asylum, and helps on initiati…

Farai is director at the Centre for Natural Resources Governance in Zimbabwe (http://cnrgzim.org), and works to empower communities for whom an abundance of natural resources has brought nothing but trouble. He has attracted considerable international recognition in this role, but this is a slightly more personal story about the journey into human …

Dan spent several years with the “Group of Experts” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These are people tasked by the UN Security Council to work out what is really going on with sanctions, armed groups, and smuggling. The approach has generally been low profile, but became somewhat infamous with the murder of two of Dan’s successors in Kasai…

Lewis is a researcher and advocate who’s worked in some of the toughest environments around over the last decade, often in the immediate aftermath of war crimes and crimes against humanity.This interview touches on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Rwanda, and Burundi.We get into both the practicalities of “doing” …

Tariq has led teams on the ground in most of the major disasters of the last decade, with agencies including Oxfam, Médecins sans frontières, AfghanAid and the International Rescue Committee.These are the highest-pressure management environments one can imagine, and this is a pretty wide-ranging conversation on professional practice and ethics in t…

A short introduction to the 100 Voices project. I explain why I think it’s needed, the kind of practitioner we’re getting involved, and what the process will look like.بقلم Ian D. Quick