Mason Students Help Refugee Children in Turkey

There’s more to peacebuilding than negotiating treaties and shaking hands, some George Mason University students learned this summer. “A lot of peacebuilding is trauma healing. It’s about helping people through trauma and helping the next generation—the kids—have a healthier set of memories,” says Mason professor Marc Gopin.

Gopin, the director of George Mason’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, took 20 students to locations near the border of Turkey and Syria to understand conflict from political figures and activists in the thick of it. But the students also worked with those victimized by conflict: Syrian refugees, most of them children. There are more than 1 million Syrians now inside Turkey, Gopin says.

The Mason students had “multiple agendas,” says Gopin, who is the James H. Laue Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Each day had segments of study, meetings with activists and periods of processing the experience. The students, who received three credits for their efforts, were highly motivated. “This is their opportunity to see the world in ways they wouldn’t if they went to the embassies. We give them a really serious ground experience they can’t get through official channels.”

As for interacting with children, “We wanted to show we were in solidarity with those kids to help nurture them in any way we could,” says Gopin, “by basically playing with the kids, being friends with them.”

So for nine very hot days in August, Mason graduate and undergraduate students and students from other schools, in a partnership with grassroots Project Amal ou Salam founded by alumna Nousha Kabawat, MS ’13, found themselves in workshops in makeshift schools around the region, organizing games and activities with refugee children, many of them orphans. The impact went both ways.

“I had no idea what to expect,” says Mason graduate student Naphaphanni Singsuwan, who is from Thailand, where she works for the ministry of the interior. “For the first three days I was depressed and powerless because I have no idea what the Syrian conflict is about, so I had a disconnect with the refugees. But when they shared their stories, I understood. One activist said, ‘All we need is your love and moral support.’ That made me understand when we deeply listen to people and give them hope, it helps them move on.”

Rajit Das, a master’s student from Houston, developed a relationship with a refugee family that affected him far more than he anticipated. “And they spoke no English,” he says. “I knew beforehand I was going to have to open myself up, but that’s not easy for me. Toward the end of the trip I reflected more and more about it and realized making an impact is not based on numbers. It’s touching one or two people, and I know that I did that.”

This was the third trip to Turkey the center has organized. Another trip is planned for March 2015.

“No one has access the way we do,” says Gopin of connections and networks he’s built over 11 years. “It’s an immersion situation no one else can offer.”