What if every time you met a new person, every time the phone rang, or even every time you went to a social gathering, there was a good chance that you would soon be revisiting the most traumatic moment of your life? Would you pick up the phone? Would you leave your home?

For Yousef, a 2005 Palestinian Seed from Gaza and 2019 GATHER Fellow, he’s now been making that choice every day for nearly half of his life. In countless interviews, essays, lectures, and his memoir, Yousef has told and retold the story of how, at just 15, a bullet came to be permanently lodged in his spine, and how he came to forgive the Israeli soldier who put it there.

The first time he publicly spoke about it was at Camp, his wound still so fresh that, as he told Seeds of Peace in 2018, a rigorous game of street hockey caused it to reopen and required medical attention. He then shared that Israeli soldiers had occupied the majority of his family’s home in Gaza for five years. They destroyed his family’s farms, riddled the house with bullets, made the majority of the home off limits to his family, killed their donkey for sport, and nearly killed Yousef when an unidentified, unprovoked soldier shot him in the back. And all the while, his father continued to teach peace, to refer to the soldiers as “guests,” and chose to live with his oppressors rather than abandon their family home.

When he was 16, Yousef moved to the U.S. to attend boarding school in Utah and went on to study at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Since graduating, his career so far has been focused on working for political and social change, including at a think tank that advocates bipartisanship among U.S. Congressional staffers, as a foreign affairs fellow in the office of Senator Bernie Sanders, and as a Manager of Congressional Affairs for the Chief Representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the United States. And now, he is hoping to put a face and name to the Palestinian people, so that what he learned from his father, and experienced as a child, will not be in vain.

“I am passionate about presenting an authentic Palestinian story to the world,” Yousef said. “I believe in peace because I am a Palestinian born and raised in Gaza. I do not want to fight; I just want to be heard by friends and enemies.”

In a recent phone interview with Seeds of Peace, Yousef shared about the process of publishing his book, “The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine,” which came out in the U.K. last fall and the U.S. in May, of what it’s like to share his story with audiences, the complexities he faces as an advocate for peace, and his hopes for the future. The questions and responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Seeds of Peace: How did this book come to be? You wrote that your father told you to tell your story, but when did you know you had to put it into a book?

Yousef: When I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to go to his funeral. It was probably my sophomore year in college, and I couldn’t go home, and I realized I was never going to see him again. I must have done a hundred, or maybe even more drafts, just writing over and over and over and over. I was lucky because someone, finally, was serious about wanting to work with me and helped me find an agent who would pitch it. Everyone said no in the beginning. Over the whole process, my English had to improve, I had to read a lot of books and memoirs. But it’s been a dream of mine for five years and I know how much I believed in it despite how difficult it was to get published.

Seeds of Peace: Being a Seed, and a Palestinian individual who can picture a future of coexistence, is kind of a difficult position to be in. What is the reaction that you usually get when you express your opinions on the conflict?

For most people, be it Israelis and/or Palestinians or Americans, they will tell me, “I very much respect you and your opinion,” even if they don’t agree. So, I’ve never had a negative experience, although occasionally you will get someone who will do the blame game and say, “why aren’t all the Palestinians peaceful like you?” This is sad because I’m peaceful because I was born and raised by Palestinians.

Seeds of Peace: It has to be incredibly difficult to keep reliving this day over and over, how do you keep telling your story when it was such an emotional experience?

It’s become like family. I mean, how do you always go back to family even though they drive you nuts sometimes? It becomes a part of you, and that’s one. Two, it brings me closer to my dad. I feel that I am keeping him alive every time I tell it, and I’ve mentioned his name pretty much everyday on so many occasions. Not just on the train or to my friends, but on college campuses and before people, and at dinners, at conferences, at events, and briefings. So he’s very much alive to me because of that experience.

It also helps me to deal with the emotions and to carry on despite the difficulties of the whole thing. It can be exhausting, but the bullet is there in my back and it is always a choice. I could just say, “I’ve got pain. I’m going to sit at home. This small event is not worth it.” Or I could be speaking and hopefully giving one more chance for peace and reconciliation in Israel, Palestine, and around the world. I have never once said no to any event, small or big, just simply because of that, because I would feel almost embarrassed before my dad. I think he would tell me, “you’re going to have the pain anyway, why don’t you just invest it in peace then?” And that’s what I think I’ve been doing.

Seeds of Peace: With each telling you’re meeting new people and traveling around. What new things have you learned from your audiences?

For those who live in Palestine or in Israel, they think that Americans don’t care about what’s going on there. And many Americans don’t know, but are curious. There’s especially a lot of passion and eagerness to learn among the Jewish students and audiences around the U.S. Regardless of where they stand, they are incredibly passionate about the whole subject. And for me, to come and see that people are incredibly interested in working to make the situation better, that’s a valuable thing for me to learn and take with me.

Also, when you just walk around with your own story, you think that you’re the only story, and every time I speak, someone will be just as brave and just as courageous to stand up and talk about what they’ve gone through, and what challenges they have to overcome. And that reminds me that I am hopefully giving that person a chance to express themselves and to know that they can also do what I just did: stand up and tell my story.

Seeds of Peace: The first time you shared your story was at Camp. What is your strongest memory of your time there?

I’ll give you two. One is when I first discovered pancakes. I thought it was the most incredible thing ever.

The second is when I first spoke. I’d never stood up in front of strangers and when I shared my story in front of the campers, their reactions gave me a sense of a mission, a commitment. I said that if I can live with soldiers for five years, be shot, you know, in a wheelchair, and if someone is able to go through such things and still be able to forgive, I hope that that still complicates it even more for Palestinians and Israelis who feel that we have no chance of ever living together in Israel/Palestine.

Seeds of Peace: You said as your GATHER platform that you want to be a voice for Palestinians. What do you want to tell people about Palestinians that they aren’t hearing elsewhere?

That everything that I believe and all my values and principles come straight from Gaza, and therefore my country and my people should be subjugated no more, should be denied no more. We should not be in constant fear. I want to present a legitimate voice of my people in a human way. There are so many issues that, when I lived in Gaza, I thought were only issues that the Palestinians had. But when I came to the U.S., I saw that there’s conflict, poverty, and inequality here, too. And I want to remind people that I’m not just a political thing. I’m not a threat. I’m not going to do harm.

Seeds of Peace: Do you ever feel guilty that you left Palestine? That you had the opportunity to get out while others did not?

Every day. That’s why I do what I do because I’m trying to make it count. Every day that I got to spend in this country, I treated it as it was my last day, especially when I was on a student visa. I was always on a mission. I knew that I always needed to make everything that came my way count. Because if I make it, and hopefully I do, then other kids from Palestine, and the world who are going through such circumstances, will still find the light and hope to do something interesting and powerful with their lives.

Seeds of Peace: You’ve been living with this story now for about half your life. How does it continue to motivate you to work for peace?

I’m never going to give up because that’s the whole point of my dad, that we are never going to let the actions of others, right or wrong, determine what kinds of human beings we will be. And though there’s still war in my country, I feel even more dedicated to just stay true to my message and learn. I will study books, I will read, I will meet all people, including the ones who disagree with me, and try to understand where they are coming from and to educate myself as much as possible, because that makes for a truly fulfilling life.

Seeds of Peace: What do you say to people who say that peace is impossible? Or that too much damage has been done?

For five years I watched my dad be mistreated by soldiers. I watched them takeover his house. And after all that, I remember how I was forever sold because he won. He didn’t leave, they didn’t demolish the house—he paid a price, but he didn’t become a refugee. Of course, Palestine is still under occupation, but I just saw in that little circle, that little point on planet Earth, I saw soldiers and I saw my dad. I didn’t see TV, I didn’t see big issues, and propaganda and media, it was just with my own eyes, and he got the house back. It still is the most incredible thing I’ve ever witnessed. So, when someone says peace is impossible, I would like to remind them of the moment after the soldiers finally left, that my dad went upstairs and said to us, “I told you I was going to get the house back.”

Seeds of Peace: With the platform given to you by your book and by being a GATHER Fellow, what do you hope to achieve in the long run?

I hope to be someone who is able to change lives and to help those who need help. I hope to be there by a good leader’s side who’s trying to make the world a better place. And to write another book.

This series highlights our 2019 GATHER Fellows. To learn more about the inspiring social change that Yousef and our other Fellows are working towards, check out #FollowtheFellows on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

For all the indignities that come standard with the middle school experience, one thing that Naissa never thought she would have to feel embarrassment for was her identity—for being black.

Yet, there she was, one of just four or five black pupils in a school with hundreds of students, making their way to the principal’s office after a school-wide announcement had summoned “all the black kids” to the main office.

“I was very confused, and embarrassed for being pointed out,” Naissa, a 2015 Seed from Maine and 2019 GATHER Fellow, recalled recently.

“I never thought I’d be put in a position where I needed to walk in front of all of the school to an office, wondering what would be on the other end, what could all of the black kids have done?”

When Naissa and the others arrived at the office, the principal realized her mistake. “I meant the Black kids,” the principal said, referring to a family name, and dismissed the students of color without so much as an apology.

As political refugees who left Rwanda when she was a very young girl, Naissa, along with her mother, twin brother, Nathan, and older sister, Pricillia (both Maine Seeds, 2016), were already long accustomed to being the vast minority almost everywhere they went in the mostly white city of Portland, Maine. So this incident wasn’t the first time she had felt lumped into a collective instead of being seen as an individual, but it was certainly the first time she had seen it painted so clearly.

Looking back, however, she said it was an eye-opening experience that set the table for the work she would eventually pursue.

“I saw that whatever I had been feeling for years, it wasn’t nonsense, and it made me realize the importance of having some type of understanding or recognition of people who have different identities outside of what the majority is,” she said. “It was the first moment that made me see that, okay, you need to do something about it—although I didn’t know what.”

A few years later she and Pricillia would put the pieces together in the form of CivilTEA Discourse, a series of peer-to-peer led dialogues that, as a Seeds of Peace GATHER Fellow, Naissa is working to expand to high schools across the northeastern United States.

The idea for the program came in 2016, shortly after Naissa’s second summer at the Seeds of Peace Camp and Pricillia’s first. It was a time when America was beginning to experience a type of divisiveness they hadn’t witnessed since arriving in the U.S., and it hit extremely close to home for Naissa. Her mother had always made sure that her children paid attention to what was going on around them—from gentrification changing the composition of neighborhoods in Portland, to politics happening in both their home and their adoptive country.

So when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign visit to Portland triggered negative conversations at their school, the sisters saw an immediate need for civil discourse—the kind of vulnerable, open-hearted discussions around difference where everyone had a voice—that they had been introduced to during facilitated dialogue sessions at Camp.

It took hard work, but eventually it became part of the curriculum at their school, with regular dialogues on whatever the students wanted to talk about—racism, identity, beauty norms, immigration, religion, sexual orientation. Before long, other schools began to take notice, and CivilTEA blossomed from there.

They currently have four schools that are fully signed onto the program, which includes schoolwide dialogues (including faculty) every other month and panels on relevant topics. They are also working with a number of schools and universities on providing facilitation training. The goal of the program, Naissa said, is not to reach consensus or implement a certain agenda, but to create a platform where underrepresented voices could be heard and participants build empathy by listening to perspectives different from their own.

The concept in and of itself is impressive, but don’t forget that Naissa and Pricillia were teenagers when they started this. Even three years later, at ages 19 and 20, respectively, they’re still facing the same challenges that most any young changemaker can relate to: 1) balancing your dreams with classes, homework, a job, a social life, and any other extracurricular interests; 2) figuring out a budget and the ins and outs of running a nonprofit or business, and 3) perhaps most importantly, being taken seriously in professional settings.

“No one has ever brushed us aside, but not only are we young, we’re women, and women of color at that,” Naissa said. “So whenever we have an idea or initiative in a work setting, we feel like we need to work even harder to prove ourselves, to show a little more confidence that we know what we’re doing and that the work we’re doing is very serious and should be treated as such.”

Of course, there are times that youth is an advantage. Naissa is only a few years removed from being in the exact same seats as those now filled by the high school students that CivilTEA serves. And since many of the participants in the facilitation courses are also college students (Naissa is majoring in international studies, and Pricillia in political science, at Emmanuel College in Boston), she’s able to understand their mindsets and work with them on a peer-to-peer level.

The balancing act, however, still remains a tricky one. She said her professors have often been accommodating, especially since CivilTEA has ways of tying into her coursework, but when it comes to actually attending classes, maintaining a full-time job, and planning for CivilTEA, there are only so many hours in the day.

“I don’t know how we’re doing it, to be quite honest,” she said. “But I think one thing that keeps us going is understanding what we’re prioritizing, and the heavy love that Pricillia and I have for our education, as well as the honor we feel for being in a position where we’re able to work on CivilTEA.”

It would seem that there would be no room left for also participating in a Fellowship, but for Naissa, being accepted into GATHER was like an additional level of validation that all the work she and Pricillia had been pouring into CivilTEA was worthwhile.

“When I got that first call that I was being considered for GATHER, I had to step back and say that no matter how many times I’ve thought CivilTEA wasn’t going anywhere, or felt frustrated, or overwhelmed, or questioned if we were putting in too much or not enough effort, this was an outside perspective saying, ‘yeah, this is worth it.”

Her dream, she said, would be to see CivilTEA as a mandatory part of school curriculums all over the world. And as she sees the way immigrants are being treated in her adoptive country some 15 years after she arrived, and people being viewed not for their gifts and possibilities, but for their skin color or visa status, she can’t help but think that a dialogue-based tool for finding and spreading empathy is more critical now than ever.

“I think what keeps me up at night is that we aren’t looking at each other as individuals with so much potential, with so much to offer the world. I tune into the news today, and see how we’re looking at and talking about each other here in the U.S. as non-humans, and can’t help but think of Rwanda, and how they called the people cockroaches,” she said. “I see immigrants coming here today for the same reasons that we did, so of course it feels personal because I share an identity with them, but I have this life they don’t have, and it could have so easily been different.”

One thing she said she often talks about with her GATHER mentors is the endgame for CivilTEA—does she want empathy, or solidarity? Of course, solidarity would be the ultimate goal, but to Naissa, the pathway must come through empathy. Dialogue, be it in CivilTEA or another form, can’t solve all the world’s problems, but is one way to bring out the humanity we all share.

“I think we all have the capacity to be empathetic, and once we’re able to recognize that and see people as individuals, to find at least one thing to love about them and let that embody who that person is to us, then we can reach solidarity. And I think that’s what everyone is striving for, especially at this point that we’re at in the world.”

This series highlights our 2019 GATHER Fellows. To learn more about the inspiring social change that Naissa and our other Fellows are working towards, check out #FollowtheFellows on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Borders—be they the physical ones defined by governments that might prevent us from having the job or the life that we desire, or the intangible ones that keep us from connecting with a neighbor who is different than ourselves—are never far from Mohammad’s mind.

Through either his father’s job in education or his own studies and career as a renewable energy and economic development expert, the son of Palestinian refugees has traversed many, many borders—among the places where he’s lived, worked, or studied are Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, London, and New York City, and he hopes to soon add Paris, and eventually Vancouver, to that list.

While it wasn’t always easy, he said this mobile lifestyle shaped who he is: A self-described “nomadic Arab” who is naturally curious, easily maneuvers between cultures, and is always looking for the story, opportunity, or connection that is just beyond the lines that typically divide us. Occasionally borders slow him down, but more often than not, they are what motivate and inspire him.

“My biggest passion is the idea of a borderless world,” the 2019 GATHER Fellow said, speaking by phone last week from a sidewalk cafe in Amman. “A world where I am not judged for where I was born or where my parents were born, but for who I am. A world where people can transcend boundaries and borders, where they can connect with one another on a deeply fundamental level.”

His focus in particular is Middle Easterners who have been forced to leave their homelands to resettle in Europe. Amid a rise in anti-Semitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and nationalistic sentiments across Europe, he is looking to change the narrative around the Middle Eastern diaspora there by uniting it.

Enter the Mediterranean Migration Narrative Project, an initiative that Mohammad co-founded and that is at the core of his work as a GATHER Fellow. The project would create a network of the Middle Eastern diaspora in Europe—namely the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews who migrated in the middle of the last century and the more recent Arab refugees—to share their stories, form meaningful connections, and hopefully establish productive collaborations in food, business, and the arts.

The outcome, he said, will hopefully change the perception around refugees so that they can be seen not as a burden to their new neighbors, but as valuable additions to their communities.

“One of the big purposes of this project is to assert a more positive image of Middle Easterners,” Mohammad said. “People love food, art, technology, and businesses that create jobs, so connecting them so they start projects that change them, and the societies around them, for the better is one way to insert positive impact from within these communities that they now call home.”

The idea for the project was born out of friendships with several people who are now helping him build the program. Particularly meaningful was the story of his friend Rafram, a Jewish artist and culinary expert whom he met while living in Tunisia. Rafram was born on the Tunisian island of Djerba, but at a young age his family, along with many other Jews at the time, left the island to seek opportunities in Israel.

El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia

“More so than his departure from Tunisia, it was his decision to return that inspired me,” Mohammad said. “As an adult Rafram said, “OK, I’m going back to my home country and I’m going to use art and food to revive a thriving Jewish culture in a place that’s become monolithic.’ That was pretty amazing to me.”

As a Palestinian, he said that looking at refugees as productive members of society has always been part of his story, and he’s troubled to see the region that he grew up in become increasingly less diverse.

“The Middle East is unfortunately becoming less and less diverse,” he said. “It was first the Jews in the middle of the last century, and today it’s the Yazidis, Assyrians, and Copts who are being socially coerced to leave.”

So as much as he is driven to show Western societies the benefits of welcoming refugees into their communities, he is also eager to show the Middle East what is lost when a society becomes less diverse.

“The first thing it loses is its creativity because diversity fosters an atmosphere of thinking outside the box. Just think of how many tech startups in the U.S. were created by immigrants,” he said. “So by demonstrating the value that these minority groups bring to their new communities, I’m also trying to send a message to people in the Middle East: Look at what you’ve lost by forcing minorities out, and how wonderful it would be if these minorities were working back at home, and what type of opportunities they could provide.”

The project is still in its very early days: Mohammad and his collaborators are currently searching for the right 16 candidates for the first cohort. Ideally, he’ll move to Paris this fall so that he can meet with candidates and potential partners there, as well as in Berlin and Rome, where he hopes to hold three workshops over the course of a year. His biggest challenge at the moment is funding, but he’s optimistic that he’ll have the cohort lined up by the end of the year.

And if all goes according to plan, he won’t be running the program several years from now.

“The dream I have for this is that I won’t hold it forever,” he said. “I’m hoping that Jewish and Arab people in Europe will step up to become executive directors so that it becomes run by and for Europeans of Middle Eastern descent.”

There is much work to be done, and there’s no guarantee that the blood, sweat, and many, many hours that he pours into this project will pay off. He’s taking small jobs here and there to pay the bills until funding is secured, but Mohammad said he’s not deterred. His curiosity, his desire to reach beyond borders, and, most importantly, his commitment to create something lasting that others can build upon, won’t let him rest until he sees this project through.

“There’s a story in the Muslim faith, that when God created Adam, he said he wanted to create a ‘khalifa,’ which is Arabic for ‘successor,’” Mohammad explained. “Humans are on earth for a reason, and that reason is to create a better world for those who will come after them. So to borrow that phrase, it’s about being a good khalifa and leaving something behind that people can take and build upon and take to the next level.”

This series highlights our 2019 GATHER Fellows. To learn more about the inspiring social change that Mohammad and our other Fellows are working towards, check out #FollowtheFellows on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.