IVLP Alumni Spotlight features U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumni as they reflect on the impact of the program and how it has affected their work and lives. Here we feature two alumni who participated in a Multi-Regional project for women engaged in countering terrorism on practitioner and grassroots levels in their own countries. The participants spent two weeks in the United States examining the growing threat of terrorism and extremist organizations, the role of women within these organizations, the radicalization of women, and the tools and strategies that help counter this threat.
| Visitor: | Maya Yamout | Natasha Jensen |
| Title: | Co-Founder and Vice President,Rescue Me | Head of Division,Department of Social Services, Municipality of Aarhus |
| Country of Origin: | Lebanon | Denmark |
| Itinerary: | Washington, DC; New York, NY; and San Francisco, CA | |
| IVLP Project: | Women Preventing Violent Extremism (MRP) 2015 | |
Natasha Jensen, Head of Division, Department of Social Services, Municipality of Aarhus—Denmark
What have you been up to since your IVLP experience?
I started as Head of Management and Political Operations in August 2015—a new office in my organization—and have generally spent a lot of time focusing on starting the office. Part of my portofolio is coordinating the CVE work within the Department of Social Service in Aarhus and coordinating with my colleagues in our multiagency approach to CVE (the Aarhus Model). Our CVE work in Aarhus was what gave me the opportunity to join the IVLP Women Preventing Violent Extremism in June 2015. Since the IVLP experience we have been working a lot on our CVE conference “Building Resilience to Radicalisation and Violent Extremism,” which took place in Aarhus November 19th-20th with more than 300 participants from more than 30 countries.
What one lesson that you learned or idea that you gained on your IVLP experience have you started to apply in your organization?
During the IVLP tour it became clear to me, that we in Aarhus have to focus more on online radicalisation and community outreach. Both were themes at our conference.
What message would you like to share with the people who hosted and met with you in the US?
First of all I am thankful for the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people in DC, New York and San Francisco. I know they are all busy people with a hectic schedule, but they still took time to meet with us and answered all our questions and engaged in our discussions.
Second I find that my IVLP network is really useful. Besides the personal friends the tour gave me, I see a lot of perspectives in the network in general. We (24 Women) are in contact frequently. We exchange ideas and knowledge about the CVE efforts and challenges and continously share links about CVE works in our different regions.
Maya Yamout, Co-Founder and Vice President, Rescue Me – Lebanon
What have you been up to since your IVLP experience?
After the IVLP program I had many ideas in my mind, so I started to share what I had learned. Now we are running a program called Messengers of Peace funded by USAID. The main goal of the project is to empower youth in Lebanon (age 14-25) to fight extremism recruitment through training on counter messaging, aggression replacement, online safety and social media tools.
What one lesson that you learned or idea that you gained on your IVLP experience have you started to apply in your organization?
Well I have learned a lot and gained a lot of ideas from more than one source, these were some of the best:
- Our meeting with Google and Facebook gave me an idea to fight extremism by using counter messaging, which is found in my counter terrorism program. I have a theory that the more we know about how youth are dragged into extremism, the more we can prevent it. It helped to see the excuses youth use with parents…Note: every brainstorm I had noted in my notebook I discussed with my sister; we tried to see how it fit in our culture and community.
- In addition, at 1,000 Mothers to Prevent Violence, I learned that we always forget that most victims are mothers, which helped in my research on both sides—from the mother of an extremist or the mother of a victim.
- And at the City of Oakland Human Services Department – Oakland Unite: The intervention they used inspired me to use aggression replacement training in my program.
What message would you like to share with the people who hosted and met with you in the US?
I want to thank you all for giving me the chance and to share my experience with extremists inside prisons and gain from others’ experience as well. I hope the US government will not stop giving young people such programs like IVLP or other programs because I believe youth can make a difference in our world and the more we have a strong youth, the more we can prevent extremism or violence so we will not see things like the Russian plane, or Beirut explosion and now Paris.
