From sweeping floods across Pakistan to devastating wildfires in California, climate change continues to advance, weaving its way throughout daily lives.
“There are nearly two billion people in the world whose lives have been affected by climate change. The challenge is in front of us. It’s right outside our window,” says Dr. Adil Najam, a global policy expert and International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) ExchangeAlumni who is stepping into the role of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) President.
But all is not lost. Dr. Najam believes that people understand the gravity of the climate crisis, and the challenge now isn’t convincing people that something ought to be done – it’s about empowering them to take accountability.
“There’s a lot of despair – we understand the gravity – but I hope we can take the energy of the anger and turn it into action,” he says.
It has become a personal mission of Dr. Najam – throughout his tenure as a longtime WWF board member, as the inaugural dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and with his most recent appointment as WWF President. By stressing the urgency surrounding the current climate crisis, he hopes to help position the issue as a present-day challenge we can collectively work toward addressing.
This involves looking at the role we, as individuals, play – while Dr. Najam is sure to not overlook the role of business and government, he acknowledges it’s a multi-faceted effort that requires us, as consumers, to lead first.
For example, we can decide not to drive ourselves, but if we instead decide to take an Uber, “those emissions are not the Uber driver’s, but still ours.” By being conscious of the impact of such decisions, Dr. Najam explains, we can show business and institutions we are ready to make a change – and when business and institutions see this consumer behavior change, they will be encouraged to take action.
Dr. Najam completed his IVLP in the early 1990s, during the height of his career. With his prior experience in Pakistan, the IVLP exchange gave him a chance to study democracy and elections in the United States as he traveled to numerous states and met a slew of interesting people, including then-governor of Arkansas, President Bill Clinton.
What was most rewarding, he says, was being exposed to the value of networking and community. Since his exchange, he’s met with numerous IVLP groups who have come through Boston, and he’s had the chance to continue to learn from these exchange participants. He sees the power of exchange in “meeting people, seeing their work in action, and then translating this work into a personal context.”
Additionally, as a former journalist, Dr. Najam says some of the most valuable life lessons he’s gained have been through people – during unexpected conversations on a bus ride, for example, or other spontaneous moments.
On his recent appointment as WWF President, Dr. Najam says he is humbled, adding that he hopes “to leave the planet no worse than when I came into it, and hopefully better.”
Dr. Najam steps into his new role as WWF President July 1, 2023.
On February 6, 2023 two earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude struck regions of Syria and Southeastern Türkiye. They were followed by more than 7,500 aftershocks and two more earthquakes, resulting in more than 54,000 deaths, and the displacement of 2.7 million people in Türkiye and 500,000 people in Syria, according to USAID.
But amid the incomprehensible destruction and loss of life, there is hope, brought by the efforts of one Exchange Alumni who wants to maintain the collective culture of the region.
Immediately after the first earthquakes struck, Ebru Baybara Demir, an award-winning chef, business woman, and an alumna of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), set up soup kitchens in the student dormitories of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in the affected regions of Osmaniye, Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman, and İskenderun, called Gönül Mutfağı (Soul Kitchen) with the help of a friend. In the first two months, she and her team cooked and distributed close to 10 million meals.
“From the first day on, all operations are conducted voluntarily and by volunteers,” she says. “Every stage, from food to logistics, proceeds on a voluntary basis. Around 200 people work in the kitchen for cooking, cleaning, managing, distributing, carrying, and other needed positions. Volunteers who have different professions just as engineers, academicians, doctors, or housewives come from different cities of Turkey [sic] and abroad.”
Her team is also still carrying out a few of Chef Ebru’s many social projects, like championing local agriculture and traditional food to her native city of Mardin and training close to 200 local Turkish and Syrian women in her kitchen at the Cercis Murat Mansion.
One project she cites that has contributed to the earthquake aid is her “From Soil to Plate Agricultural Development Cooperative,” which produces 200,000 meals daily through sustainable farming practices and has been offering a way for donors to buy local products for victims online.
The Road to Mardin
Even though Chef Ebru’s work has become synonymous with Mardin, she didn’t start off there. She grew up and was educated in Istanbul, Türkiye’s most populous city, on the Western Coast. Her father migrated to the city like many others for the opportunities there shortly after her birth in 1976, including to educate his three daughters at a time in which Chef Ebru says it wasn’t seen as an advantage to have a daughter.
But 23 years later, her roots called to her, and after finishing a degree in Tourism Guidance from Marmara University, she set off for Mardin where she was determined to break ground.
“Unfortunately, Mardin, where I returned at the end of the 1990s, had no tourism businesses except a 3-star hotel and a small restaurant. However, with its different cultures, cuisines, rituals and historical texture, Mardin was truly [made for] tourism,” she says.
Indeed, the city and region is part of the larger cultural and culinary richness of the Southeast that has been affected by the earthquakes, including Antakya, the capital of the province of Hatay, whose history dates back to the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, as well as Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, Adıyaman, and areas in Syria. Estimates on the damage to these important cultural centers are still ongoing, but many of the sites hold meaning across faiths in the two countries. The Earthquakes Recovery and Reconstruction Assessment (TERRA), which was carried out by the Republic of Türkiye with support from the UN, the European Union (EU), and the World Bank, reports that more than 60 percent of the 2,863 cultural heritage structures in the region examined by experts were damaged.
The U.S. response to the earthquakes has been focused on humanitarian aid first, with nearly $235 million in humanitarian assistance provided to date and an additional $115 million in private funding pledged to help victims, as well as the establishment of a 100-bed emergency “Turn-key” field hospital by the U.S. Department of Defense in Hatay. But beyond the pressing humanitarian needs, there is also the awareness of the importance of preserving the area’s rich culture, including the intangible cultural heritage to which Chef Ebru has devoted enormous effort.
The Cultural Heritage Center (CHC) in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has been tracking the damage to cultural heritage from the start and is working with regional and international partners to assist.
“Recovery of tangible and intangible cultural heritage plays a vital role in bolstering the resilience of communities following a disaster,” the office says. “We are working with partners in the region to identify opportunities to aid heritage recovery and demonstrate U.S. respect for the rich history, traditions, and diversity of the affected communities.”
CHC’s Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has supported earthquake recovery efforts following past disasters like those in Nepal (2015), Mexico (2017), and Albania (2019). International expertise developed in these and other projects will be an asset for recovery in Türkiye and Syria in the coming years.
What Happens Next
When Chef Ebru thinks about what makes Mardin and the region special, she of course goes back to the food.
“Each cuisine has its own unique flavors, stories, and rituals,” she says. “But I think it is the blending of local products and traditional methods that makes that cuisine unique. The best material to give the flavor of the cuisine is the local products of that region.”
It is that blend of local products and tradition among the people she’s been helping and the ones she’s helping now that makes her latest social project so important. She credits her IVLP exchange on “Addressing Refugee and Migration Challenges” in 2018 with giving her best practices to apply to her ongoing work on social gastronomy to projects with refugees, which no doubt is more vital today.
“This is the disaster of the century,” she says. “We have a lot of people lost. People’s lives changed overnight. We face a process that cannot be easily recovered. However, the important thing is that we learned what solidarity and nationality mean here. Despite that we are overcoming this challenging time together, as a nation.”
Noella Luka, 2019 Professional Fellowship Program ExchangeAlumni, mental health advocate, and award-winning documentary filmmaker, joined MentorTalks to talk about her personal mental health journey, how she’s working to destigmatize mental health treatment in Kenya, and to share her tips on supporting family and friends living with mental illness.
According to a landmark report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2022, one in eight people live with a mental health condition. In Kenya, an estimated three million people live with intellectual and mental disabilities, according to United Nations figures. At the same time, mentally disabled people – often poor – receive little support from the government and often face widespread stigma.
In her documentary, What’s Eating My Mind, Noella traces her personal journey with mental health, from being first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, to helping to bring awareness to and break down the stigma around mental health across the region.
In this episode, Noella takes us through her experiences and how she has helped herself and her family better cope with her lifelong challenge. She also talks about how to help yourself if you’re dealing with mental illness, as well as how she’s working with stakeholders in the community to destigmatize this “invisible illness” and better support those coping with a mental health challenge.
“In looking at mental health from the African perspective, we tie mental illness to African traditional norms,” she says.
“But these are things that have been perpetuated from generation to generation, and we need to adopt other ways in which to deal with mental wellness.”
Tune in now to hear from Noella!
Speaker Bio
Noella Luka is a Nairobi-based, award-winning documentary filmmaker, mental health advocate, and exchange alumna of the Professional Fellows Program on Inclusive Disability Employment (PFP-IDE). Her work has been screened in Africa, Europe, and North America. She has produced films about mental health, disability, and climate change and led a PFP-IDE project about mental health storytelling in Kenya. She is the Team Lead of Mental Voices Africa, a mental health support group that empowers people with mental illnesses to share their stories. This sparked her current project, “What’s Eating My Mind” - a personal film that captures the lived realities of mental illness within Kenyan families. The project is a co-production between LBX Africa and STEPS, and is available on the BBC Africa YouTubePage.
MentorTalks Video
What does it take to go from teaching middle school to leading digital efforts for the Artemis missions at NASA? And how can others access similar opportunities in the federal government?
In honor of Space Diplomacy Week, Thalia Patrinos - a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) ExchangeAlumni and Communications Strategist contractor at NASA headquarters - joined us on MentorTalks to discuss using art, science, and space to connect with millions of people.
While on her Fulbright ETA, Thalia taught English to students in Gqeberha, South Africa. It was this experience, along with her time subsequently teaching math and science in middle school in Philadelphia, she says, that helped her succeed in her current career.
Thalia has been able to apply these skills in her role as a contractor at NASA, creating digital messaging for a global audience. “We tell ourselves that we have to explain it at an eighth grade level – because a lot of people don't have a background in science or math,” Thalia explains.
In landing a job with the federal government, Thalia also shared why contracting can be a great way to get your foot in the door. “If you aren't finding any civil servant positions, look for the contractor positions – there are a lot of different opportunities available,” she says.
Thalia’s experience is a true testament of this – in her current role as a contractor, she leads numerous digital campaigns at NASA, including overseeing the Faces of NASA photo series and co-leading audio strategy for the agency.
Interested in exploring the overlap between science and art, how NASA connects with audiences, getting a job in the federal government, and learning a fun fact or two about South Africa?
Watch this episode above or on Facebook @InternationalExchangeAlumni!
