 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the first Global Peace Building Center webinar for educators, entitled Women, Terrorism, a Conversation with Dr. Kathleen Kingst. My name is Ann Louise Golden, and I direct the Global Peace Building Center here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. On behalf of all of our team, I'd like to thank you for joining us this afternoon. The Global Peace Building Center is the USIP's public education program, which focuses especially on engaging the next generation of peace builders. We do a lot of work with and for educators, and we place great value on the work you do to bring knowledge and skills to young people, to equip them to engage effectively in this complicated world. So we hope this new webinar series will be a great resource that will provide you with new ideas for teaching your students about important issues of conflict and peace. Today we're focusing on women tackling terrorism, and frankly, this topic could not be more timely. First, because our news headlines seem increasingly dominated by threats and instances of terrorism around the world, but also because this is Women's History Month. Each March, the Global Peace Building Center and USIP more broadly celebrate the important contributions of women to peace building. And today we think it important that we understand the ways in which women are taking us down to prevent violent extremism in countries around the world. They are often leading the charge in their own communities and making a difference in ways that it is important for us to understand and that deserve all attention. So we are thrilled that our colleague Dr. Katherine Keynes does hear this afternoon to share her expertise and a new action kit her program has developed on this subject. Now let me turn the mic over to my colleague Megan Chavalowski, who will facilitate the rest of the conversation today. And I would like to thank her and the rest of our team for their great effort in putting this event together, and I look forward to seeing you again at future webinars. Great. Thank you for the welcome, Annelise. I am so pleased to be hosting this webinar and to have you join us. I'm also really pleased that we have a lot of people in attendance, which is fantastic. I took a quick note of where everyone was from, from what I could tell. We have participants from California and Florida. And I was just thinking that I hope you have warmer weather than we're having right now on this early spring day in D.C. We have participants from Michigan, Massachusetts, our neighbors in Maryland and Virginia, Oregon, Washington, D.C. And then folks are joining us from Tanzania, Nepal, the Czech Republic and Uganda. So I'm really glad to see a few old friends. Hello, and to welcome some new faces to our webinar. And if I missed somewhere where you're from, please send it in. You'll see a chat box, a question and chat box on the right-hand side of your screen. And my colleague will let me know where you're from. I want to make sure we have everybody. We also have in this room, even though you can't see everyone else, we have, of course, Dr. Kathy Penist sitting next to me. We do still have Annelise Colgan and my colleague Denison Staples, who will be helping us gather questions and comments. And we have my colleague, I mean, Abulitsky, who is going to be live-tweeting us a bit. So we have a whole room here, even though you can't see everybody. So if you would like to tweet about this webinar, I think you see a hashtag in the corner of the slide, which is GPCWebinar, and we encourage you to tweet about it throughout. So this webinar's reminder is going to be recorded. So it will be available on our website. You can find it later this week. And just real quick, I'm going to check with Denison to see if there are other places that I missed. OK, so I got everybody. Fantastic. So I wanted to review with you really quickly the agenda. So we all are on the same page. So we, program Annelise, I will really quickly go over some logistics, since this is our first webinar. So we're all on the same page. And then we will hear from Kathleen. And then following our conversation with Kathleen, there will be an opportunity for questions from our participants and an opportunity to make some classroom connections. You'll see a link on this slide, which leads you to the PDF of the Action Kit that Kathleen will be talking about. So I think Denison will also send it to you in the chat box. So if you'd like to download it, you can have it there with you right now. So please, I want to encourage you to participate. Send us questions and comments so we can make this as useful as possible for you. So to review logistics really quickly, letting everybody know all participants are muted, you're all muted. So grab a cup of coffee, eat a snack. It's fine, we won't hear you. If you'd like to send questions and comments, you can do so through the question chat box. As we talked about, you can see it there when they're pointing to it. And Denison, my colleague, will gather them and ask Kathleen them if they're with you today. So just as a reminder here, your dashboard disappears. It sometimes does that if you're doing something else, so you can make it reopen by clicking on that red arrow. And if the Global Key Building Center staff sends you a message, a little message icon will appear. So you just click on that and you see a message. And last but not least, if you're having technical difficulties, send us a note. And Denison will try to help you as much as possible. So since you're going to be hearing a lot from Denison, I wanted to give him a chance to say hello. So go and jump in. Hi, everyone. We're so excited to have you here today. I'll be working on the technical side of things and looking forward to your comments and questions. Thanks so much. OK, wonderful. Let's get started. Without further ado, I'd like to really welcome Dr. Kathleen Keynes. Thank you for being here. I wanted to tell them a little bit about you, so they know who you are. So Kathleen is the director of our Center for Gender and Peace Building here at USIP. And the center focused on gender impacts of conflict and post-conflict transition on both men and women. So this is probably something to come up as well when you speak. She is the co-editor of the book, which I have here, Women in War, Power and Protection in the 21st Century, which is a very powerful book. And it really confronts stereotypes about women as victims of war. And instead focuses on the critical role that they play and should play in peace building. So you can find us on the USIP's website if you're interested or online. But in addition to Kathleen's expertise in gender and conflict, she's also worked for 15 years in the international development field and has regional expertise in Central Asia, and where you put extensively on the impact of post-Soviet transition on women. So a variety of experiences, and I'm so glad you can be here. And I just want to echo, Ann-Lise, in saying that we really think this conversation about women preventing violent extremism is incredibly timely and proving more important. So I was thinking when I was putting this together, one of the reasons that we thought this issue would be really important right now is that whenever I'm reading the news, and especially these days reading about the challenges that confront the world in dealing with violent extremism, I'm feeling very disheartened. There's not much out there about the good news. And so that's why this conversation is so important right now to be giving us the good news of what people in communities are doing. So I'm really glad to have you here to be sharing these stories with us. And I'm going to turn it over to you to get a chance to talk about the action kits and fill us in on it. So thank you all, and it is really my pleasure and honor to be at the first webinar, and I'm really excited. Well, I first want to just say a few more thoughts about my background only because I think it will help you understand some of the motivations and the processes we've used in terms of understanding the roles and possibilities that women play in preventing violent extremism. I was on the ground during the collapse of the Soviet Union and then its transition and it's setting up here in countries where there was only one country. And it's very interesting to watch a society come to terms in terms of transition. And one of the very, very first things you see in a transitional space, whether it's a disaster, an economic change, a war, or a change in government, or in this case, a huge change in governments, is that the question of gender roles start to be discussed. It is a basic tenant in the field of anthropology that gender is really not another name for women. In fact, men are gender beings and in fact, gender is something that is very much learned in our everyday communities, our families, of course, in our schools, religion, institutions. We learn what are the roles that are acceptable for a man, a woman, a girl, a boy, and which roles are not. And furthermore, gender is really also a much larger understanding of one's identity that crosses between masculinity and feminities. I think it's important to begin there because too often we oversimplify gender and over-homogenize the concept that gender means women and women are of some kind, one unit and they're very similar, we all know. All of that is not accurate. But it's important in the policy shaping world that we remind in our design of projects, in our attempt to make a difference that we actually don't do more harm, that we understand truly the diversity in gendered identities. So if that's one takeaway from the next few minutes, I hope you have that one down, that gender is not another name for women and it's critical that we see gender in all its identities and also flexibilities because what we do see and we are seeing right now, and what Megan was talking about, picking up the newspaper, I do the same and I'm like, oh my goodness, what is happening to our world today? And I also have middle school children who ask the same questions. So as a teacher, I empathize with you and your role of trying to help young people make sense of the enormous transitions going on in the world and certainly in terms of gendered identities. I would add here that as societies undergo some kind of rapid transition, as we're seeing in those societies that are very much affected by a violent extremist movement, what we see is that gender roles are among the first things that become situated as to what you can and cannot do. And one of the areas that I think is worth spending a moment talking about is the fact that we may focus in on women during this discussion, but I'd like to just for a second talk about young men in this process because one of the working theories of a fellow anthropologist of my Mark Summers and a former USIP fellow here talks about what happens in societies and countries where there is a sense of failed adulthood. In other words, as a young man in some societies, there's certain rights of passage or certain things that you must acquire in order to be considered a man. And that sense that maybe you can't do it in the society you're working in is one of those ideas currently being contemplated about why the surge of violent extremism in these countries undergoing rapid and if you want radical change, I'm thinking Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and of course Syria. But we see it in our own countries as well. And I understand we have people from perhaps Nigeria and it's a country we're working in as well. So in saying that here, I wanted to introduce the concept that when we're talking about preventing violent extremism, we're talking about a very gendered process. In other words, it's not a silo, it's not something over here, a little box, okay, and now we're gonna work with women on this. It is, we know that gendered identities are, in fact, being instrumentalized in many of these violent extremist groups. It is very clear what you can wear, what you can eat, what you can do, what you can't do by the fact are you a man or a woman? And it is becoming more and more obvious that there is this kind of segregation going on in which there are rules and expectations for both men and women. So what does this all mean? Now I'm going to answer a little bit more about why all of this matters in the security field. And it's impossible to talk about violent extremism without talking about security. And one of the other takeaways that I hope you is either written down or it gets reworked into some lesson plan here today is the fact that we have over the last 20 years as an international community made enormous headway in the security sector in understanding that, by the way, security is a gendered field and that it has been more or less organized in a very masculine approach to protection and also a sense that men go to war, women and children stay home. Over the last 20 years, that has changed dramatically because we know what was once the front line has become the front doorstep. When we talk about security center, what are we talking about? What is security in that context? Well, in this context that I'm talking about, I'm talking about the organized institutional sphere of influence that understands what is happening in the world and how using militarized forces, militaries, police and other security actors to help bring control back to a society of country that has lost control has been affected by violent conflict or violent extremism. Why I brought security into the picture is in order to understand this shift going on about the role of women and their empowerment in the security field, we have to understand that 15 years ago, the United Nations Security Council, that means a very elite group of countries focused on the security of the world. We're not talking the General Assembly, which includes all countries of the world, but this is a select and powerful group of security countries focused on how to maintain a peaceful world. They passed the Security Council Resolution, which is now nicknamed 1325, and many of you may know of it, many of you may not, but I wanted you to have it as a marker because I don't think we can really understand women preventing violent extremism unless you understand this particular security resolution because it is an international agreement and it has conditions that we sign up to say it matters to the world. And 1325 was very simple in the sense that it for the first time recognized that women were not only needing to be counted in war. I mean, for many, many centuries, we counted only soldiers who died in war. We did not count the women who maybe were nurses, who were maybe on the front lines and some other capacity besides carrying a gun, but we did not count them in the casualties, nor did we count the fact that in many of these wars, sexual violence against women and men, for that matter, and children were not considered a criminal act. And so when we think about 1325, it's critical because it was a game changer in how we began to understand the security sector and to say women are not only victims in war, we need to count them and acknowledge this, but they are also powerful providers of peace, and they are often the majority of the people left after a war. Take Rwanda, 70% of the survivors were women out of that genocide. So we have to begin to count women into the story of security. So 1325 really is an important marker. 15 years ago, this particular resolution was passed and out of that resolution has come many other resolutions, what we call the sister resolutions, to address other nuances of women in war. And now we are beginning to talk about women in violent extremism. They are not the same. We know that violent extremism happens in countries that are not in a violent conflict, but we also see in the world today in countries like Libya that has gone through a violent conflict and violence of war, and now also dealing with violent extremism. Syria is another example. So what is the concept of women in violent extremism? So three years ago, we embarked on a very interesting, if you will, pilot study to really ask the question, how could women actually prevent violent extremism in their multiple roles, mothers, teachers, professionals, market, in the market, maybe as a religious leader, but they play many roles of influence. And what are they already doing and what could they do better if they had basic understanding of what is radicalization, what does it look like? What should you be looking for? For example, in your community, if you're a teacher in one of your students, if you're a mother in one of your children, and just again beginning to ask the question, going back to that security sphere, that women can play a positive and proactive role as a security actor, if you will, in preventing violent extremism. So it's like putting on a new lens. I love Abby Disney, who was the producer of the film you may have seen, Pray the Devil, back in the house. She said, you know, the way we understand war is through basically John Wayne's pit permit, as if there was a camera, and that is war through the eyes of a man who is a battle. What we're trying to do is understand not only violent conflict through the eyes of women, but also violent extremism. So these studies, the first study really looked at what are women already doing, and we began in two countries, Nigeria and Kenya. And in these countries, there is not a war per se, but there are extreme acts of brutal and violent extremism. And so it is being a woman in these countries is often dangerous. Being a woman who is really a leader looking at this issue is especially dangerous. So I say that because I deeply respect these women who have stepped up to take on this role of leadership in their societies. So let me tell you a little bit about what that looks like. For example, I'm going to begin with Marianne who lives in Garisa in the northern part of Kenya. She's been working to engage teachers because teachers are with kids, as you know, eight hours a day. They hear, they watch, they observe things that sometimes parents, and certainly really busy mothers who are attending to maybe other children also dealing with food and in these communities we're talking in villages. So there's not the added advantage that many of us live in, electricity, running water. So they are busy people managing a household. And so Marianne began to work with teachers about how to look for signs in both boys and girls of radicalization. Very simple, this is not rocket science. You know, a changing interest, an obsession with a certain kind of idea or perhaps ideology or certain kind of dramatic shift in religious practices. All of those things, and of course, all of these are context driven. She began working with teachers. Well, not only has it helped the teachers understand more about what's happening in these classrooms. And again, this is right on the border of Somalia and so there are refugee camps very nearby. So they are dealing with very complex human systems and changing systems, transitions, if you will. They felt very positive about being a part of this, if you will, early morning system. They also, because they began to talk to one another as teachers about this, they didn't feel so alone about it. It's, again, this is not rocket science, it's about communication. In the same way, I will lead to Delhi, India where Archana works in a radio program. It's called Mothers on Air. And she really gives voice to this issue of radicalization in these small villages or mid-sized towns. We're not talking urban environments here. We're talking about giving voice to often people and especially women who not even had a voice in their own family. And so she has developed these listening thoughts where mothers are able first to talk among themselves about their concerns of violent extremism. And then eventually, through the radio, talk about it. Now, so we have to imagine is a situation in which this woman, in one case, and they talked about this one woman who really did not want to go on the radio. She said, nobody will listen to me. Nobody listens to me at home. Why, not even my own children. Why would anybody listen to me on the radio? But eventually, she did go on the radio. And she had a lot to say. How did she get there? How did she move to Kuala Lumpur? She wanted to go to Kuala Lumpur. Well, that is what this one program called the Mothers School. It's out of a program called Women Without Borders. And it is been launched by Dr. Edith Schlaufer out of Vienna, Austria. And it's been basically piloted now in six different countries. And what's interesting, these countries are very diverse, obviously, but the process has been really similar and the results are very exciting because it also follows, if you will, the wisdom of 1325. And that is, as women have voice, they are themselves empowered. You cannot empower somebody else. It is a process of self-empowerment as they are able to talk about what they are witnessing, what their own knowledge is. It's not coming from outside, it's coming from within the community. So much of it is about dialogue, listening, and recognizing what they can do better together than they can do alone. Maybe I should stop there and take a break. Yeah, take a break. I wanted to show, we have a couple of slides here. I wanted to show some slides from your action kit, first of all, because they're beautiful, to give people a taste. And I think some of the things that you'll see in the titles here, the different sections of the ones that you hit on, art is just incredible. And I think you can also find activities in here, exercise, it's all right. Shall I, because I know that we're looking with, I know, very talented teachers. Part of the action kit is really two things. We wanted to make something that is really what I would call 101 to the violent extremism. So we asked nine different experts that we know to write something that was, what I said, out of the box, a little around the corner. Tell us what we should know in the future about women preventing violent extremism. So the essays are short, about 500 words, each really meant to be stimulating and informational, but not academic. Here's what would be helpful to think, multi-dimensional about many roles women are playing, mainly for good in preventing violent extremism, but we do need to recognize, just as boys and men are being radicalized, so are girls and women. And we should not be blind to that fact. And the motivation, we're still learning a lot about why. For example, the young women in London got on a plan to Istanbul and joined the extremist group known by some as Daesh, by others as ISIL, and by some as the Islamic State. Well, in the exercises, it talks about asking participants what are the areas in their community where women have a lot of influence and what areas do men have influence over? And what we have found in all the work we've done is that you may know something about violent extremism and you may not, but everybody has an opinion on gender. It's a great topic to be in, any discussion about. And certainly, there are a lot of complaints. And don't do this, women don't do that, and whatever else. But it begins a conversation because what everyone recognizes is whatever the gender roles they grew up with have changed, the rules of the game have changed. And some of those rules are being used against women. Some of them are being used against women. And we have to understand that before we can begin to understand the spheres of influence. In addition, it talks a lot about, we have a couple of resources in here. What's the difference between dialogue and debate? We see sometimes in working with groups that in their educational process, they have, if you will, conflated dialogue with debate and or conflated debate with dialogue, we'll see which way either way will work. But the point is that sometimes we don't listen enough. And that is a problem when you're trying to solve a community problem. And that's why the third section is all about engaging communities. Because in many ways, the foundational blocks for really preventing violent extremism begins in identifying the problem. You know all of these. As teachers, you do this every day in your classrooms, identifying the problem, talking about what are the various solutions and actions to make a difference. And it, again, is a very process-oriented effort. There is no silver bullet. Human dynamics, human change, changing a human society takes time. It takes leadership. It takes hope in that leadership. And we are fully convinced that women are key in our global efforts to stem violent extremism. Thank you. And going back to the dialogue and debate, that's also something we find so important as well in the power of teachers. Students do a lot of debating in school. We don't do as much dialogue. We learn the rules of debate. That's right. We do. We do rules of dialogue. And so that's something that we have a lot of activities on is how do you become really good at listening and communicating. So please take a look at this because there's a lot of great exercises. I wanted to follow up on and show a couple pictures here. I have two slides of some photos of the women that you were talking about. And when they were here to share their work at the launch of your action kit, but also in the celebration of what they're doing, so they can learn lessons from each other. So I have a group photo, and then I also hear some photos of these women in action during the three days they were here. I was wondering, the two women, Mary Ann, and Archana. Archana, are they in any of these photos? I'm afraid you can't see the one on the far right. Yeah, Archana is the woman I'm speaking with there. I'm in the blue. She's from Delhi. And she's the one who has worked with community radio and the listening clubs. And she has really, you know, you can imagine the reach when you have great people that are listening to you. And she has really, you know, reach when you have radio. And, you know, the dialects in India are... Yes. I think you might know that. Hundreds. But she actually works in the various times as well. So this is great impact. You know, so much of what we think about today is social platforms and cell phones. And those are powerful force. And we know, especially among young people, because certainly social media has played a role in enticing young people into these violent extremist groups. But I think what Archana and then Tasneem, I'm looking to see if you have a picture of Tasneem. She's from Pakistan. She is also doing this kind of parallel universe in terms of radio. But I think what they really helped us look at was that we need to also think low-tech. When radio is low-tech, it doesn't require a television, a phone. People can be working while listening. And it has enormous impact. And these dialogue shows that they run so that it is this kind of discussion, listening, asking questions that women do call in. And they are not afraid, because they're hearing things that are one familiar to what's going on in their life, but not having to show their face, but only a voice. It gives them some sort of privacy protection. As I said, this is dangerous work. And it also helps them recognize, and this is critical, that they're not alone. We think a lot about, hear a lot about the young people who perhaps become extremists and commit violent acts, but we know less about its impact on the family unit. And there's, for many, great shame, great isolation. And so it's not only the loss of the child into a violent community or violent extremist community, but it is also being ostracized in the community. So there's great sense of isolation. So what these radio programs do, or I like it, Mothers on Air, they help close that gap, maybe gives them a sense of listening to what other people are doing to make a difference. And I always say that peace-building is really about human imagination. And when we see an idea that another community is doing to make a difference, we go, yeah, if they can do it, I could do that. And it's contagious, just as we see their violence is contagious. But good acts, good deeds, good efforts, and good teaching is also contagious. And we need more to make sure these stories are out there so that when you open your newspaper tomorrow morning, I'll feel inspired. So on that note, I mean, why aren't these stories out there? So they are happening and we're hearing these success stories here. And maybe here at USIP, but why aren't they making it into the headlines? I don't know, it's more people. Well, media, they just go to find these stories. And that is a great, that is a good question. Because these, the flatness of the world, if you will, with social media has many good stories out there. And so we do have a chance to select. And we hand through our social platforms, Twitter, Facebook, and other such efforts, actually learn about the stories and spread those good ideas. But we have a long ways to go with print media. And it is still not the first thing that's put on the first page. But there are a lot of other good stories throughout. Turning to the middle. So I wanted to ask you a question about young people. So it's like spreading the stories and inspiring people through hearing stories that are now well. And one thing we do in the Institute is hear it in the local Peace Building Center, but also in the institutes. Really strongly in the ability of young people to enact change, to drive change. And we encourage people to take action to build peace. But then the question of course is always, okay, but what can I do? And especially when it's such a, the issue is so huge as is this issue. And so I'm wondering if you have advice for young people about what they could do, how they could get involved in some way. Whether they're here in the US and learning about this in the classrooms, like participants and teachers, or maybe they're in the other countries that are represented here as well. Any thoughts you had? Well, first of all, they should visit USIP's website and especially the Global Peace Building Center where there is curriculum on peace building and always great ideas and a good dialogue that you carry on with students and teachers. I think that's very important to have what is called a community of practice. I have a couple of feelings about to your question. One is because of the social media platforms, there are so many positive things you can do. The one thing I say to my own kids is the first place to begin is do not buy into any kind of bullying. First, stop there. Don't let negativity control the social media platforms. Put out good ideas. It starts with you, yourself. So take a stand first and not wait. Second, I'm impressed by the number of young musicians, actors, actresses who have taken positive stands and helped young people look at opportunities for social action. I think that is a way forward and one in which there are many young people engaged. I also think that within schools there can be ways that as parents and teachers we could create better campaigns. We have the science fair. We have the history fair. Do we have a peace building fair? Good ideas for bringing peace into the world. So we get a sponsor. We get sponsors from the local restaurants that create a trophy. We have to incentivize peace. I'm going to put a plug in here for peace clubs. We just started an initiative called Peace Clubs that lets students take the idea of what an action they want to take and run with it. It teaches them what skills we need in order to take action on this issue that's really important to you and your community globally. Then tell us what you're doing. Take this action and let us know what happened and how it went so that we can share your story. It's an example of a peace building fair. If anybody out there starts to think it's a peace building fair idea let us know. We have a peace club or any other ideas. I want to make sure we get to some of our participants and make sure we have a chance to ask some questions. I'm going to turn it over to Denson and see if he wants to share some questions or comments that people have shared with him. Absolutely. We have actually a slew of questions. I hope we have time for that. There is one question here by Bridget Schultz and another educator also who has asked for you to talk more about how women are disproportionately affected by extremism. It seems that more and more women are joining extremist causes. Why do you think that is? So the two-part question. Would you mind just throwing out three questions in case I can connect them? Absolutely. We have another question here about what is the role of men in supporting women who are trying to prevent biomechanism? Is there a role for fathers or the young boys and male students that we teach as well? We have a third question about you touched on this a little bit, Kathleen, talking about how technology can be leveraged for peace building, but a question here from Pakistan about people in communities who are not well resourced. Especially those in the non-profit sector, what are some actions that they can do to help reduce the risk of radical infusion? Great questions. Thanks so much. I'm actually going to begin with the role of men and indeed fathers. We have started an initiative here at the Institute of Peace called Men, Peace and Security. The reason is that we need to engage men in this effort of course gender equality, but also to help understand many parts of the world. Men do play the role of gatekeeper and so we are trying to more and more in our work engage fathers in their role as a father and helping them understand that in having a daughter be educated is really not only economically smart but also it gives voice to, if you will, that security sector that I mentioned earlier in which women have voice and recognize things that are going on in the family or in the community and say, I'm really concerned because something's changing here. It is an actual security action. So we're very engaged in making sure men are part of the storyboard. One of our participants was a man, Omar from Zanzibar, and he has been very engaged in the mother schools and after running five mother schools in Zanzibar on preventing violent extremism he said, I really have to get the fathers engaged. It's not enough that this burden is left to the mothers. It has to be a whole of community effort and I don't think anyone could have said it better. It really starts with the parents communicating about what they're seeing and ways that they can help protect their community, their families. The question about are women portionally affected? Absolutely. I mean, there is no doubt what we're seeing in, I am thinking very much about Iraq right now and Syria, Libya. Women are in part deserted. They are being brutally physically and emotionally and sexually hurt. They are having their children taken from them. There are many things that are really criminal here. This is not about war, this is criminality and we see the euphemism of children or child brides, but really we're talking about the trafficking of human beings. So indeed, they are extremely vulnerable and what we're seeing in the Syrian refugee camps, for example, you have a lot of women, you have boys, you have girls, you have perhaps elderly men and women, but you have no young men and what is happening is that they need number one, they need dialogue, they need education, they're asking for better understanding about what's going on. I mean, three years ago they were living an everyday life and it's as if you might as well have called it a tidal wound. It's like overnight their worlds have turned upside down and they're traumatized, so we need more education on post-traumatic stress, what it means in the family, there are so many skill sets that the world has and some of what they need is information. Information person to person is fabulous in some of these settings we know it's dangerous and so again to the question from Pakistan. One of the examples given a couple of weeks ago in a community where there was not electricity for radio or battery powered radios, they resorted to a chalkboard in the middle of this small village and they would write messages for those who were illiterate, they had somebody who explained the message, what the concern was were worried about this and so they were in sense of public translators. So the board was there and people could just write up their concerns or if they could not write because literacy becomes an issue here and that's why radio is such an incredible force for good. Thank you. Do we have, I think we have time for one or two more questions. Sure. I have one more ready to go and it looks like another one is coming. The next question is about you talked about the importance of regarding men as gendered beings. What are the practical consequences of this shared thinking? Oh that's a great question. Well I would say that one of the terms that we have been using in our work and again we work in the field of comfort prevention and peace building and so we work on something that is the acronym is DDR disarmament, demobilization and reconciliation and reintegration such as tours as well. But one of the things we see is that in a war zone and now we see the violent extremism you create these kind of status symbols of hyper masculine guys and you know the six pack the guns, the violence and what we know certainly from the violent conflict arena is you can take the gun out of their hand but you don't take the gun out of their mind and this is a famous quote by a special representative who is with the UN but the problem is that we reinforce these really what in the southern hemisphere they might call matismo but we call it hyper masculine ideals that do not allow men to be kind of a gentle father doesn't allow men to cry doesn't allow men to go to a doctor because a real man doesn't go to a doctor. We could spend an hour just talking about what are all the stories that men have been told about what they can do or can't do to be a real man, right? So it has a lot of impacts on women and that's why we're working on the man pieces security agenda because we can't stop violence against women until we engage men and helping them deal with the violence that they have experienced we see cyclical violence very few men are violent but of the violence committed in the world most is committed to the violence so we're trying to tackle violence against women through engaging men in the multiple roles that they really have open to them just like women have multiple roles of being also very strong empowered and capable leadership in the security field Did we have one more question? Okay, fantastic, which leads us right into classroom connections because this is a webinar for educators of course where we'd love to hear from our participants about how they see this issue and what we've been talking about connecting to their work to your work in your classrooms or elsewhere so please if you have any thoughts please send them our way and we'd love to share them with everybody In the meantime I wanted to make sure we connected you to some of our resources as well to help you start this conversation in your classroom or educational space so as you see here the Global Peace Building Center has a lot of resources for educators as well as for students on gender peace building so there's a whole list here, I won't read through it you can read them, I will add though I wanted to point out that in that list is an expert that is an opportunity to come to a forum on our website and submit questions and of course this month's questions go to Kathleen's team so if you have further questions after this and didn't get a chance to ask them, this is a forum to do so but it's also a place where you can bring this topic back to your students or young people you work with and see if they have questions and they can submit them to Kathleen's team so this is a way to continue the conversation after this I also did want to encourage, we do have an educator forum on our website as well where you can go and continue this conversation amongst yourselves amongst each other and we can direct you to that so you can learn more about Kathleen's work as well and their center, the center on gender peace building and the websites there and I wanted to point out that you're going to be editing video interviews and making them available so you can actually hear some of the women doing this work talk about doing it so you can tell us where and when they might sign those that would be great. Well, you can find the Action Kit on our website and very soon hopefully by the end of May it takes a while, we have 15 interviews and we are going to put them into vignettes so you can look at what's going on in various countries and different approaches innovative approaches to making a difference fantastic, thank you. Do we have any classroom connections? So we have one AP World History teacher who picked up on what you were discussing, Kathleen, about casualties being counted by soldiers killed rather than a broader formula for doing so and so the teacher asked, can we wanders and ponders now how those numbers would change if we included casualties of women and civilians as well so that justice could impact our teachers teaching world history and think about how they teach and allow most violent wars in history. There is a great question here from Abigail Shearer Robinson who asks about working with young people, how do we identify someone who is being radicalized all the way to the point where we can take action to evade or mitigate or stop the radicalization of an individual? Do we have an anecdote or insight into what the process of radicalization looks like from the individual? Thank you for the connection to our teacher. It's an important change to the way we think about how we teach statistics and history and who's affected. What are your thoughts on radicalization? There are a lot of great resources and maybe we can add those to this classroom connection but what we do know is that the change of character among the youth is gradual and often it doesn't affect just one person but we see perhaps other family members or peer groups also coming along into this, if you will, vortex. I will tell you that it is in some sense context-driven but there are clear indicators that, you know, change of behavior is the big one. Change of what the focus of their activities. The change in ideas or combativeness or aggressiveness. There are all sorts of indicators that have been put together and the United Kingdom has probably done some of the deepest research on the issue of radicalization and we can also connect you to the sites of different that has quite a program on this. I did want to mention, if I could, as to why it is important to see yourself as a parent or a teacher a critical interlocker. Sorry, I'm like losing my voice here. Kristen Fair, who is an American academic, sampled 141 jihadis and 35% of them were inducted through family and friends. The others, you know, possibly online through a mosque or through a church but not in this case church but a mosque. The key is, though, family and friends are critical here and this is where the community can play a very important role. Thank you. That's about all we have time for today. We're exactly at 5.30. I'm going to take two extra seconds of your time to just tell you about some next steps. Please stay tuned for our next webinar. We're really hoping we found this useful and engaging. We'll let you know when the next one is coming up. After this webinar closes, there's a very brief survey. I promise it's 30 seconds. So please answer it, I promise, and it will help us improve our webinars for the next time. Please feel free to reach out to me if you want to follow up on this webinar or on any of our resources. You have my email address and phone number. Please contact me. And I just want to say thank you definitely for joining us and thank you. I'm leaving much very hopeful. I think these stories are inspiring, give us a greater context, but also leave us with a sense of hope of how we can fight these issues. So thank you so much. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I look forward to talking to you all. Thank you and thank you all for joining us. Really appreciate you being here and your questions and comments. So thank you and have a great night.