Our Time is now

Another long day has ended at MIMT. With the same daily structure as the previous two days, we had more panel discussions, speakers, breakout sessions, food, and entertainment of course!

Today we watched a video footage of Dr. John Paul Lederach speak about conflict transformation. Following with Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, who has 10 years’ experience working with the UN spoke about his understandings of conflict transformation. His eloquent nature resonated the vast experience he possess as a diplomat who talked about getting to a state of permanent peace being like a tripod, “it’s a tripod of security, development and human rights that helps us to sustain a permanent peace.”

The day continued with the EC series panel discussion, this time the Global Unites Programme Coordinator Kau Hanmantgad was leading the panel with, Ned Lazarus and Hannah Simon Girard s each presenting who spoke of implementing strategies, evaluation and compassion. Kau shared his knowledge on the implementation of strategies. Ned focused on evaluation and explained it through the work he has done in Palestine-Israel. Lastly, Hannah spoke very personally about compassion. Hannah informed us that the word compassion comes from the Latin meaning of co-suffering.

After lunch we had the opportunity to listen to DRC Unites President Pascal, Kenya Unites President Benson and Ramzi SLU National Director on a panel sharing their knowledge and experience with International Alliances. They each had experiences working with different International Alliances. They were honest with their information telling us about the negative and positive outcomes which can arise. But all seemed to have really positive experiences. Ramzi highlighted that “alliances itself [are] opportunities, but sometimes we fail to use the opportunity to our advantage. You need to have a clear vision so you can strategically use the alliances for your benefit.”

After this panel the breakout sessions were underway, which was the last one of the breakouts for the summit. Once everyone came back together, people were asked to split into groups of three and with people from different countries. They had to answer one of these two questions, ‘What is an immediate action which you will take away from the breakout session and implement?’ The second question was ‘What could Global Unites offer you as you go forward?’

The night was ended with some comedy led by Abel with impromptu theatre, where every one of us thoroughly enjoyed. Tomorrow is declared to be the last day and will keep us going at GU. We’ll be at MIMT until the morning sessions and then we will prepare for closing ceremony. 

by Jasmine Pilrow