The previous text unfortunately contained a mistake. On the picture with the martyr’s family, we were with Father Elisha, not Father Ishaq. With apologies for this small error. Dina. Also apologies for the previous newsletter that was sent with the wrong title in the email subject. CH.

 Time flies, it has been three months now that I have been interning at CAWU. One of the activities I enjoyed most during my internship is obviously contributing to AWR’s newsletters. From day one, Drs. Cornelis Hulsman encouraged me to develop my English writing skills by interviewing and meeting several persons. At the same time I was supported and advised by editor Matthew Sparks. Thanks to this work, I have been able to improve my writing skills, each one better than the last. During the different visits and interviews I conducted, I met unique and wonderful people who each taught me something special. I deeply feel that CAWU pushed me to give the best of myself to my work. My internship here has also pushed me to go outside of my comfort zone and to embrace fully each opportunity that is presented to me.

From left to right: Fady Assaad ; Christopher Frattina; Jantine Stulp and;

From right to left: Dina Bouchkouch; Zeinab Mehdi; Adel Rizkallah; Omar El Nowaihy; Muhammad Radwan; Shen Shangyun.

Cornelis Hulsman was on the day of my farewell in the Netherlands.

One of the strengths of working at CAWU is definitely its strong and open culture of communication between colleagues. Since the first day, everyone has been doing their best to make me feel comfortable and each member of the organization has been present to assist me; this contributed to an enthusiastic and friendly work atmosphere. Furthermore I learned more than I expected to learn in  a variety of  fields; through the all the missions I took part in, from audio recording summaries  to developing the iContact database, I really appreciated that I could work on several tasks. I easily get bored with routine work. The diversity of the work further helped me to keep my passion for my internship all along the way. Exploring relations between Christian and Muslim communities in Egypt has reassured me in the fact that fostering dialogue is the key to achieving mutual understanding between the faiths through a constant work, building bridges step by step.

Thus I would like to warmly thank everyone who took part in  my experience at CAWU; Drs. Cornelis Hulsman for giving me the opportunity to learn and to take part in interfaith dialogue, Mr. Adel Rizkallah for his extreme kindness, Matthew Sparks,  Mohammed Radwan and Shen for being such amazing and joyful colleagues, but also the recent interns who joined the CAWU team.

Each experience helps us to learn more about ourselves, the will to  have a positive impact on our world need to be entertained; we can’t keep complaining and watching what’s happening around us and not try to change it in our own scale. One doesn’t need to be an influent politician, religious leader or famous person to start a dialogue. All that is  needed is to be ready to listen and understand others’ point of view. 

Cairo, June 17, 2017

Dina Bouchkouch

Dina Bouchkouch is a Moroccan-French student of Foreign Applied Languages, English - Arabic, specialized in International Relations at the University of Bordeaux. She has interned for a period of three months at the Center for Arab-West Understanding.