An interview with Mohammad, Amala alumnus, activist and peacebuilder about leading meaningful change
The last time we spoke to Mohammad Shehadat for the Amala blog was when we were introducing him as part of the first cohort of Amala High School Diploma students in Amman, Jordan. Now, just three years later, Mohammad is preparing to start his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration at Royal Holloway, University of London after having received a fully funded scholarship. Only 6% of refugees globally access higher education, so this marks a huge achievement for Mohammad, a 28-year old Syrian refugee, leader, changemaker, and activist.
In celebration of the International Day of Peace, 21 September 2023, we interviewed Mohammad about how what he learnt at Amala contributed to his highly successful peacebuilding initiative, Youth for Peace, and how education and peacebuilding can inspire people to create and lead meaningful change.
The Youth for Peace initiative facilitates access to educational and capacity building opportunities with resources for refugee youth to gain skills and become influential leaders and peacebuilders in their communities. Mohammad’s initiative also promotes the value of peacebuilding activities between Jordanian and Syrian youth.
We were excited to catch up with Mohammad to talk to him about his myriad achievements and projects since graduating from Amala.
Mohammad, you’ve achieved so much in the past few years and have so many projects on the go, it’s hard to know where to start! Firstly, congratulations on getting into the UN Summer Academy. Can you tell us a bit more about it?
It was a UN Summer course. I was nominated for it three months ago. The course was run by the United Nations System College and was a funded opportunity by the Kofi Annan Foundation in Switzerland, as I participated in the Kofi Annan Changemakers programme. The course was about governance and sustainable development. It was interesting because it brought together many activists, decision-makers, educators, and people working in education, well-being, climate change, and related subjects. From my point of view, it’s important to integrate the concept of peacebuilding with all of these subjects.
You're an activist, you co-founded the Youth for Peace initiative and the Expatriate Student Affairs organisation. You're an Amala alumnus and a Kofi Annan Changemaker, among other things. How do you manage your time and all these projects? Does the challenge motivate you?
I always ask myself the same question! How do I manage all these projects and achievements in such a short time? The answer is that my situation has always encouraged me to. I often say that if I was in Syria and there was no war or conflict, my life would be like any other person's. My goals, my visions, my thoughts about life and myself would be very traditional. But my situation as a refugee helped me to keep looking for any opportunity that would be valuable for me and for my future. It has helped me to look not just not just at the negatives but also seek out the positives.
Sometimes people say that the opportunities I have taken aren’t useful or that they’re a waste of time, and ask me what I have to gain by completing them. For me, the answer is that I gain experience and knowledge, I meet others and expand my network, and I build more relationships. I think this is something that other refugees think about too. Sometimes it’s the need in itself that encourages us to look for everything so seriously, because these opportunities might not come about again.
I remember when I heard about Amala, something that encouraged me to join and learn more about it was because it's the first programme for educating refugees in the world, and an opportunity to get a high school diploma. So for me it was very valuable because I knew it was going to be a unique experience. We were going to be learning about subjects like peace-building that simply don’t exist in traditional educational systems in Jordan or elsewhere.
Mohammad and fellow Amala alumni from the first cohort at graduation day, 2021
So it was the uniqueness of the courses that drew you to Amala? What did you think it would be like?
For me, I'm always looking for leadership programmes to improve and enhance my leadership skills, to lead societies and young people. Through the Amala High School Diploma, I learned a lot about how I can really be an ethical leader and how to be someone creating positive and real change, not just traditional actions or activities. That is what has helped me deliver my ideas to decision-makers. For example, when I participated in the Kofi Annan Changemakers Programme, I used a lot of things that I had learnt at Amala, and I applied what I developed through my Amala PIP - Personal Interest Project. My PIP was the Youth for Peace Initiative. We used simple tools, nothing like other organisations, but we were able to create a clear social impact. That is what encouraged them to choose me as a final candidate for the Kofi Annan Changemakers, and other related programmes. In my opinion, organisations look directly and deeply at the potential impact that an initiative might make in the future, as well as considering the value of our actions.
Can you tell us a bit more about your PIP and the Youth for Peace initiative?
At Amala I learnt the basic elements and activities to be able to launch a social innovation, initiative, organisation or business enterprise. My colleagues and I were thinking deeply about the potential impact that we can show through our PIPs. At Amala I learnt the importance of having a learning mindset, not only during studying or classes but also after graduating. Having a learning mindset is going to develop with time and with the potential opportunities that might come along, or relationships that could help with improving and developing an idea.
It’s always important to keep that growth mindset! Sarah (fellow Amala alumna) is your co-founder of Youth for Peace. Can you tell us a bit more about how you work with Sarah?
I advised Sarah to apply for the second cohort of the Amala High School Diploma! I saw that Sarah and I had many things in common. She is also an activist in immigration and asylum issues, and she has very unique knowledge and experience, particularly in the field of research. So I knew that would be a strength in terms of us working together and launching activities. We're still working together and we are thinking about how we can improve our work, how we can apply for funds that will enable us to improve and implement our ideas in reality, not just on paper.
Mohammad’s work on gender equality: participating in WikiGap in 2022, an annual campaign and competition to promote the achievements of women around the world by improving and adding articles to Wikipedia to close its gender gap. Mohammad and Sarah (Youth for Peace) won the WikiGap award for their contributions on the successes of Arab women.
How did the Amala High School Diploma develop you as a person, and how did it change your mindset?
The main thing that helped me become a different person was the kind of courses we took at Amala. The courses were new to me, but later, I realised that they are really aligned to global issues and are about how to create different change, especially by refugees. The global stereotype of refugees is that they always need help and support, but there aren’t many people saying that refugees could be partners in creating change. So this is what encouraged me to think seriously about how I could be a part of this process, even if it's a local or a global process of creating change. It was very good for me, because I experienced the life of asylum and being a refugee in Jordan. Even here in Switzerland, I'm a refugee for the second time after living in Jordan as a refugee for ten years - a long time.
As someone with a deep understanding of conflict and different cultural contexts, what does peace mean to you?
When I launched the last project that we implemented at Youth for Peace, called 100 Global Citizens, one of the project components that we tried to teach young people was what peacebuilding is. Many people asked, “why are we talking about peace? We are here in Jordan where there are no wars or conflicts.” I told them that’s exactly what came to my mind when I started the Amala Peacebuilding course. We are living in a peaceful society. So what do we need to talk about? But we talked about peace in a different way. Peacebuilding doesn’t mean peacekeeping. It means facing and taking on local and global challenges. For example, we talk about many different issues, but they are all interrelated and close to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were set by the United Nations. Our world is suffering from a lot of challenges: gender inequality, health, immigration and refugee crises, and education.
Education is one of the most important SDGs to fight for: to provide these rights to everyone and not leave anyone behind.
It’s interesting to hear your broad take on peacebuilding. You mentioned a project that you ran with Youth for Peace. Can you tell us more about the kind of work that Youth for Peace does?
Youth for Peace started with our first project called OWN WAR. It was launched by Sarah at Amala. Later I thought of another idea related to global citizenship education, simply because I feel that these courses aren’t available for refugees for many reasons. The most important one is that refugees are unable to travel to other countries to meet people from different cultures. So it was easier to bring these kinds of courses to refugees and to teach them about other issues. And also about the Sustainable Development Goals. Some people told us it was the first time they’d heard about the SDGs, but they think they’re very important. Awareness of these other issues is important for us as refugees: it’s easy to feel that being a refugee is the only issue that exists. So these kinds of courses get people talking and thinking about other issues as well. For example, in Jordan, many refugees from Syria think they’re the only refugees in the world. So when we told them there are millions of refugees, from Iran, from Venezuela, from lots of other countries, they became more aware about the issue. It's not only local - it’s global!
During the monitoring and evaluation of the projects, we received very positive feedback from the participants. Most of them said that they are motivated to learn more about these issues, particularly the SDGs. And now we’ve been encouraged to think about launching initiatives in our society. Many people started to think about broader issues such as mental health. Now, they have huge thoughts and huge ideas about these issues.
That's good to hear, because that’s what Amala develops in students like yourself: people who learn and then then go on to create impact, like a domino effect.
Exactly! Leading change. And this is what the Kofi Annan Foundation Executive Director (Corinne Momal-Vanian) says too. She was the special assistant to Kofi Annan. She said that this is what Kofi Annan inspired in young people, seeing how they can lead change and create a better world for all, not only for young people. They say this was the main vision of Kofi Annan, and this is what encouraged me to think about empowering young leaders through this programme, which is called Kofi Annan Changemakers. The idea behind this programme is to connect participants - just 12 participants each year from around the world - with a mentor. These mentors from Greycells, they are former UN workers and experts, so they have lots of experience in working at UN agencies or other private and governmental organisations. We are working with people with very valuable experience. This is not only good for implementing our projects, but also thinking deeply about how we can develop our projects and make them sustainable.
Mohammad being presented with his Amala High School Diploma on graduation day, 2021, with Amala Co-founder Mia Eskelund (middle left), Jordan Programme Manager Lamis (far left) and Learning Lead Fatima (far right).
What are the kinds of challenges that you've faced and overcome with the Youth for Peace Initiative?
That’s an important question, because I experienced challenges in Jordan when setting up Youth for Peace, particularly in terms of the registration process. That’s because as a refugee, in Jordan, it’s impossible to register an organisation. But I overcame this challenge by working with other organisations under their umbrella and with their support. This helped, but the other challenge went beyond just the mobility issue. When we tried to apply for funding opportunities, we were unable to do that because we are an unregistered organisation. This was the main challenge. Despite that, we didn’t stop. It actually encouraged us to continue with our initiative, because it is very valuable, not only for us, but also for society. Youth for Peace, like Amala, is very unique and useful to young people, who really need this kind of education.
What’s been the biggest achievement for Youth for Peace so far?
The biggest achievement of Youth for Peace is that we are now working on a global level. We joined the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY) as a member and we also recently joined the Global Youth Community at UNESCO.
Recently, I also participated in the Ban-Ki Moon Centre for Global Citizens in Austria. They launched a similar programme to the Kofi Annan Changemakers called Learners to Leaders. It works to empower global citizens and young people around the world who are leading projects. It aims to create positive change as well. When you show the impact that you’re having, it’s really valuable to these people. They believe in you, and what you’re doing because it’s close to their mission.
What would you say to someone who is about to start the Amala High School Diploma?
It depends on the young person! If they look to and appreciate the Amala opportunity as something that can build and empower them, not only to get a certificate so that they can go on to another school or to university, but also to start acting in their society and in the world, then they can become a real changemaker.
Any final words?
In Jordan, I studied at the Swedish Institute (SI) and participated in the SI Leader Lab. I was the only refugee to be accepted onto this programme. I am now a member of the Sweden Alumni Network in Jordan. This has encouraged me, because it’s made my previous and current actions more valuable. You can see how people believe in you in a real way. They value what you do, and they encourage you to do more, because this world needs changemakers more than ever before.
Since graduating, Amala has tried to help connect us to onward pathways and higher education opportunities. Lots of students believed that after graduating they would be given a scholarship or something like that, and were upset when that didn’t happen. We later appreciated the guidance from Amala because it encouraged us to reach the next level. Amala helped us and empowered us. I later realised that it’s very difficult to connect refugees with higher education because it’s very expensive. Lots of Amala alumni have now reached higher education, in or outside Jordan, because they really worked on themselves, and they tried different routes to reach higher education.
Now for the good news, which I left to the end to surprise you - is that I have got a fully funded scholarship to study a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration at Royal Holloway, University of London!
Huge congratulations to Mohammad, who will be going on to start his degree later this year.
Keep up to date with Mohammad and find out more about the changemaking initiatives he is involved in:
Follow and connect with Mohammad on Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram
Follow the Youth for Peace initiative on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter
Read more interviews with Mohammad on the UNESCO and UNOY websites
This interview is the first in our series on the first cohort of Amala High School Diploma students. To make sure you don’t miss out on future Amala alumni stories, follow us on social media (amala_edu on Twitter and Instagram) and sign up to our newsletter.