Build Peace Fellows 2017 – 2018

The 2017 – 2018 Build Peace Fellows program supported 3 teams working in Myanmar, Bosnia and Pakistan. This program was funded by PeaceNexus.

Luis Gustavo Flórez

Luis is passionate about finding creative ways of addressing conflicts and has found in music a potential vehicle for nurturing peace. He is currently living in Myanmar and voluntarily advising Turning Tables Myanmar (TTM) – an organization working on empowering marginalized youth through music and film – on peacebuilding with a particular focus on M&E. Luis has a Master in Peace and Conflict studies from the European Peace University (EPU), Austria, and a Master in International Affairs and Diplomacy from the Australian National University (ANU), Australia.

Since 2015, TTM is implementing a project called ‘Voice of the Youth’ (VOY) which engages vulnerable youth from different regions of the country through music in a constructive dialogue on social change based on supporting social cohesion, promoting human rights and political inclusion.  As a Build Peace Fellow, Luis worked to design and pilot a smartphone app that will strengthen the youth community from VOY in a process of enhancing their participation on positive dialogue and violence reduction. The app was designed to be a youth-to- youth platform which uses music as a safe space for voicing youth visions of society and promoting dialogue across societal divides. The app would also help the TTM team to keep supporting youth in their music learning as creative advocates and active citizens in their local communities.

Visit Turning Tables Myanmar on Facebook.

Quratulain Fatima

Quratulain Fatima is a policy practitioner and an Oxford public policy alumnus. She is one of the first women to join the Pakistan Air Force, where she served before joining public service. She has extensive experience working in rural Punjab with a focus on conflict prevention through development. She has passionately worked with state and non-state actors on peacebuilding through service delivery in conflict ridden areas of Pakistan.

Quratulain currently works at the Agency for Barani (Arid) Area Development (ABAD), Punjab, where she leads a team focused on improving the existing integrated development plan for the Arid Track of Pakistan. As a Build Peace Fellow,  Quratulain designed and piloted a GIS-based water dispute resolution management system in Punjab‘s vulnerable arid tract, combining technology and community-based participatory research for prevention and resolution of communal conflict in farming communities. The key aim of the system is to improve the dispute resolution time and prevent disputes through identification of conflict patterns and deployment of an effective resolution toolkit.

Visit the ABAD Facebook page.

Elma Selman

Elma Selman was born in Prijedor (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and is currently living and working in Sarajevo. She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, department of Psychology with a thesis on “The relationship between Art and Psychotherapy in Art Therapy”. She is also a graduate of the Nomad Dance Academy and holds an MA in Human Rights and Democracy, where her final thesis focused on the role of theatre in dealing with the past in the Western Balkans.

Elma works both in psychotherapy and in the field of visual and performing arts (theater, contemporary dance). As a Build Peace Fellow, Elma developed a methodology that engages youth in an active participation in the local community through their reflections on future. After a series of focus groups with high-school students on how they see the future, which values they would like to build their future on, and how they see the past in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the reflections were used to create a theater play. The aim was to activate young people in the local community, while bridging the past and future and bringing together different actors in the local peacebuilding scene.