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By ICUUW Staff

14 May 2024

Hesna Al Ghaoui, a Prima Primissima Award-Winning Journalist, editor and reporter, author, Hungary

Over the past years she has been the correspondent of the Hungarian Television and has reported the world from more than 20 countries among them from several combat zones. The reports have been awarded a number of prestigious national and international Prizes. She has also shot documentaries, among others the one about the causes of child mortality in Uganda or about the challenges of the international aid system in Afghanistan. Throughout her career, she has interviewed prestigious personalities, such as Pope Shenuda III., Israeli President Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Mousa, and world-famous experts like social psychologist Elliot Aronson, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and social psychologist Anthony Pratkanis.

In 2010 she wrote a book about her experiences gained on the front line, having the title of “On the Land of War”. Her own TV program Babel - The World with Hesna - has shown fascinating life stories during its 37 episodes. The journalist has been observing the appalling physical and mental effects of fear not only in combat zones but also in more peaceful countries. Therefore, she started to address the issue more thoroughly.

She looked for researches in order to study what happens in our brain and in our muscles when we feel fear and she also asked world famous social psychologists about how we can realize when fear disingenuously starts to control our habits and behaviour. She has discovered an incredible research about stress: that not only stress is able to affect our body and mind but it also works vice versa: we can learn to influence the physiological processes and their effects on our body. Basically, there is no slice of our lives which would not lead us somehow back to the issue of fear. Based on her experiences and interviews related to this theme, she wrote a book having the title of “Fear Bravely” published by Bookline in October 2017.

Following this she was invited to give a talk about her theme to dozens of cultural centers and companies (like Microsoft, Bosch, Samsung, Mercedes, Richter Gedeon, Citybank). Having talked to many people about the issue of fear – and raising two little children of her own – she realized how important it would be to address the children, too, with this topic, as fear is many times a taboo for the kids. So she wrote and illustrated her latest book, Holli, the Hero, about a little girl, who learns how to handle fear and difficult situations, thanks to a little monster, who teaches her that fear help us overcome difficult situations. She learns that it is totally ok to be afraid, what matters is what we channel this emotion.

Dr. Maureen K. Porter, co-leader of Pitt’s Institute for International Studies in Education (IISE), USA

Maureen has been an active member of First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh for nearly 20 years. She has served on the Social Justice Fund Committee, Campus Ministry Endowment, and advised Religious Education. After nearly a decade of sustained connection through the Khasi Hills Partnership Team, she finally was able to participate in a pilgrimage to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Kharang Children’s Village and witnessed the tremendous growth at the Annie Margaret Barr School that the Pittsburgh congregation so generously supports. With the Partnership Team she has co-created several dance- and music-filled Khasi Hills Sunday services. Her sermons draw vividly on first-hand moments of friendship and poignant examples of faith-filled progress.  Maureen’s sermons are grounded in visually evocative accounts, and she appreciates the fine use of proverbs and metaphors. As an anthropologist, her storytelling regularly honors other UU's cultural concepts that give their theologies great meaning and local resonance.

Maureen’s interest in international exchanges and global citizenship began as a Rotary Exchange student to West Germany. It has been enriched throughout her professorship in Comparative and International Education Policy via consulting work in Egypt with the World Bank, in Washington DC with the Smithsonian and US Department of Education, in Ethiopia and Kenya with Fulbright, and throughout Appalachia with the National Science Foundation. Her current focus in on decolonizing European museums as part of global reconciliation projects. As the co-leader of Pitt’s Institute for International Studies in Education (IISE) she nurtures fledgling international partnerships and takes great joy in mentoring students as they cultivate their identities as global citizens and agents of change.

Dr. Porter has published and presented multilingually on women’s leadership and contributed to international NGOs’ programming for empowering people of all genders. She backs up words with action as a long-time Steering Committee member for Pitt’s Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program. She teaches core courses on gender and education as well as anchors anthropological seminars on schools and culture, fostering democratic competencies, building culturally responsive research repertoires, and learning from Indigenous education’s best practices. She teaches using many arts-based pedagogies and experiential learning that gets students out of the classroom.

Maureen is also, fittingly for our theme, a life-long fiber artist. Her grandmothers and mother nurtured her passion for sewing, quilting, painting, weaving and rugmaking during her farming childhood and through years in 4-H exhibiting at county and state fairs. She continues this commitment to showcasing women’s roles in pushing the boundaries of material culture through her consultations in textile arts with the MUREM museum of traditional clothing in Mexico and with Indigenous weavers in Andean Peru (where she designed and led service-learning programs for a decade). Maureen delights in customizing quilts for each of her PhD graduates to celebrate their unique scholarship and personal social justice passions.

Maureen has been married for 30 years to a feminist man whom she first met in Lutheran church preschool. They are truly proud of their two adult offspring, who love nature as much as the parents do (one is a biologist-geneticist and the other is in environmental science). This Mom’s boisterous home includes two service dogs and modified wheelchair components, quilts in progress, and books scattered everywhere.