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I came to the United States as part of the IREX program “Young Leaders Fellowship”. I have been studying for my Master’s degree in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. One year has already passed and here I am, back to my home country, Russia, and I now have an opportunity to reflect on my experience in the States.
As an activist in Russia, I have been involved with many youth projects in the city where I studied for my undergraduate degree. Working with a group of other students, I published a youth newspaper, worked for the anti-HIV/AIDS campaign, and organized the UNESCO club “Tolerantia”, which was aimed at eliminating interethnic conflicts among young people through education.
As an activist in the States, I became involved in the politically conscious community of the city of Pittsburgh. I worked for the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice during my studies. My experience there was interesting; I was involved in the following projects: Students Global AIDS Project (SGAP) and the Palestinian Solidarity Committee. SGAP was helping children in Africa, was organizing events that were aimed at making people be aware of problems of HIV/AIDS locally and globally. The Palestinian Solidarity Committee organized events that were aimed at making people be aware of problems that people face in the Palestinian Authority (PA), considering the fact that often in the States, people get one-sided coverage of the events, favoring Israel. I was also a part of anti-war actions, anti-FTAA rallies, etc.
In April, there was the Idealist.org-COOL conference, where there were a lot of students – activists from all over the States; It was held in historic Philadelphia, PA. I met activists from Cornell, Yale, Berkeley, Duke, Penn, New York, Pittsburgh, etc. universities. We had tons of workshops, and seminars. From the range of workshops I tried to attend those which were connected somehow with the field I studied at the university, Peace and Conflict Resolution. I was inspired to meet so many like-minded people at this conference.
After my studies I moved over to New York, NY. In New York, I worked for the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN) as an assistant liaison to the United Nations (UN). GYAN is a youth-led non-governmental organization for young people and one of the partners of TakingITGlobal. I attended briefings, events, conferences at the UN and wrote the newsletter for young people informing them what was going on at the UN Headquarters in NY. However, I was not engaged in the UN system solely. With Alastair Clarke, who was the coordinator and initiator of the project “Youth in Conflict,” we started to launch the project. I hope that this project will be continued because we need to attract young people’s attention to the issues of peace and conflict.
Hopefully, one day we will not have wars; if we educate young generations about sufferings that wars bring to the people. When I was going to go to have lunch, I always asked Alastair if he would like me to bring something for him, and he would always ask me to bring peace and stop wars. I would say I couldn’t. However, I think that if we, young people, raise ourselves and our children with the wisdom of peace, probably, some day we shall enjoy peaceful life with no armed conflicts.
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masha
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Oleg Izyumenko | Nov 1st, 2004
A brief, but nice and interesting outline of Masha's experience in the United Stated. I would love to read about it in some more details, eventually...
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