Update from Rotary Peace Fellow
This is the seventh in our series of District 5110’s involvement with Rotary’s Peace Fellowships program. Every year Rotary funds up to 130 scholarships for dedicated leaders from around the world to study at one of Rotary’s seven peace centers. Graduates now number over 1700.

As part of the fellowship, each recipient has an applied field experience (AFE) which he or she can select. Our current Peace Fellow from Afghanistan, Tamim Ebrahimi, selected Swisspeace in Basel, Switzerland. He is now two month through his three month stay there. This is a composite of his recent mailings to Carol Fellows and Chuck Root.

Dear Carol and Chuck,

Greetings of peace and hope you are doing well along with Tim and Marti. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in advance. Please present my regards to your kind families and other Rotarian friends.

I come five days a week to the Swisspeace office. I am working on their Mediation and Reconciliation Afghanistan projects. My job so far has been to familiarise myself to the project proposals, design and activities. I will also be assisting them in delivering mediation and reconciliation training.

I joined their office retreat for two days this week in a central place near Bern. It was a beautiful place and there I got to know all the colleagues. They are very warm and welcoming! I have made friends but I eat alone sitting in front of the Rhine River. I just like to watch the river water–it has calming effect. I will be here until end of January 2025.

On November 28th, 2024, Hamid Karzai (Former President of Afghanistan) was here to join a discussion, but he did not meet with meet any Afghans. On January 23, 2025, there is a Basel Peace Forum that I will be part of. This has been an interesting but also challenging experience thus far.

My wife Husna and the kids are doing well in Brisbane. They attended a Rotary Club Christmas party last week. Zeb and Zohra received gifts which they were very happy about. Also, another good news is that Zeb turned 10 years old on December 12th. They celebrated her birthday by attending the Rotary Christmas party and baking a cake. I have been following news back in Afghanistan and things are getting worse for girls and women. I absolutely want them to continue their education elsewhere.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Peace,

Tamim

News Source : https://rotarydistrict5110.com/interim-peace-fellow-report/