Dear all,
this is a summary of the talk Ismaeel and I had on Saturday 26th November, after the conference (by the way, really good) "Voices from occupied Iraq" in London.
Fabio Alberti (president UPP) was sitting just besides us but he was discussing other projects with other people so he couldn't really enter our conversation, this summary is also for him.

First of all I explained to Ismaeel who will be the trainers and which are their qualifications, now that we have the final list:
- Jean-Marie Muller (France)
- Ogarit Younan (Lebanon) - the only woman, will have to leave on the 6th
- Jean Daoud (Lebanon) - also assisting Jean-Marie as translator from French to Arabic
- Ziad Medoukh (Palestine-Gaza)
- Saif Abukeshek (Palestine-West Bank)
We agreed that it would be good to have Ogarit speaking on the first day, and have the most religious trainees listening to a woman since the beginning.
Ismaeel says that he is afraid he will not be able to select more than 2-3 women, and that in any case it will be hard to have them interacting with all the other participants because of the religious beliefs of some of the men. I tried to insist on the importance of gender-balance but Ismaeel seemed quite convinced that this is the best he can do. Let's hope Muhammed can do at least as good as this!
The selection process must be finished by the middle of December, otherwise Stefano will not manage to buy the plane tickets.

I described Ismaeel the kind of topics we are going to cover during the training, trying to keep faithful to the last mails exchanged by Jean-Marie and the other trainers. We agreed that this kind of timetable would be ok, we propose it to you just as an example:

4th - presentations by participants, their background and expectations
- the masters of nonviolence in the Eastern and Muslim world: Gandhi and Badshah Khan (by Jean-Marie and Ogarit)
5th - the philosophy of nonviolence (by Jean-Marie)
- the roots of nonviolence in Arab countries (by Ogarit)
6th - presentation of famous nonviolent political campaigns, like that of black-americans and south-africans for civil rights (by Jean-Marie)
- afternoon break
7th - the Palestinian fight, nonviolent and violent characterizations of the two Intifadas (by Ziad)
- the campaigns and actions of grassroot movements by national and international community in Palestine (by Saif)
8th - how to structure a nonviolent campaign, step by step, with examples from the actions of Solidarnosc (by Jean-Marie)
- simulations and exercises of nonviolent action (by Saif)
9th - discussion on the possibility to organize nonviolent action in Iraq
- attempt to plan an action or a net between some participants' organizations

Ismaeel suggested to keep a balance every day (and possibly even in every session) among frontal lectures, workshops for discussions in small groups, and exercises/simulations. The topics of the first three days should be all illustrated and integrated through drama/interaction exercises (organized by Jean).
The DVDs can be probably shown in the end of the day, deciding with the participants if they prefer to watch them before or after dinner. We should also collect feedback by the participants every day at the end of the sessions.

Regarding the timetable, Ismaeel sais that it is hard to get people's attention for more than 6 hours per day, but adding a video in the end it should be ok to reach 7-8 hours. This is our suggestion:

9.00-11.00 : 1st session
11.00-11.30 : break
11.30-13.30 : 2nd session
13.30-15.00 : lunch
15.00-17.00 : 3rd session
17.00-18.00 : break
18.00-19.30 (or 21.30-23.00, we can decide day by day) : DVDs

Ismaeel will try to arrive in Amman on the 2nd of January, but on the 3rd he will be probably spending a lot of time at the Amman airport with all the letters of invitation of the Iraqi participants, to be sure that the Amman authorities will let them in (there might be problems in this respect but Stefano, Ismaeel and Muhammed are taking care of this). He should be able to stay with us in the end, on the 10th and 11th, to evaluate the training and discuss future projects.

This is it, more or less... Ismaeel do you agree on what I wrote? Do you have anything to add?

In the end, some important comunications:
- Jean-Marie is now back from Brasil and from the national assembly of his mouvement MAN so he is now writing the detailed program of the course
- Belen and Martì will meet Muhammed in Spain this week (Wednesday) so they could discuss with him the same things as I did with Ismaeel, and have some feedback on his selection process (Belen, can you please print this mail for Muhammed? since he is travelling he might not be able to read it)
- we are in the process of transferring money from NOVA to UPP to pay for travels of the Iraquis, selection costs of Al-Mesalla and SCHRD, and organisational costs of UPP; is it ok for Ismaeel and Muhammed if we include their transfers in the whole sum, going to the UPP bank account?
- NOVA will send this week the letters of agreement to all the partners and trainers
- regarding translators, Belen (NOVA) is responsible for their selection, so please refer to her for this
- I am still waiting for the last info by trainers on the precise nights in which they will be in Amman, I'll send the list to Stefano for the hotel as soon as possible.

I hope everything is clear enough, sorry again for the long mail

all my best

martina

TOP