Last Week
As my last week at USIP is coming to an end, I wanted to sincerely thank the JSD team who welcomed me this summer and Professor Warren who gave me this wonderful opportunity. Working with the JSD team was wonderful, and I could not have wished for a better experience before my last year of law school.
USIP’s work in West Africa is inspiring because it seeks to implement novel approaches to peacebuilding that can actually have positive, long-lasting effect on the continent’s population. I also had the pleasure of meeting and working with JSD’s field coordinators from Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria who are an incredible team of women dedicated to bettering the rule of law and security conditions in their countries. Through mediation, dialogues, and raw talent, the team has a whole has managed to develop an impressive model, which can be replicated to build peace in many settings.
All in all, it was a pleasure and honor to have worked with USIP’s JSD team, and I will certainly miss doing so. Referring to the dialogue between civilizations and cultures, a French writer once said, “the bridge changes the bank.” As my time at USIP is coming to an end, I can honestly say that I’ve never met a group of people so intent on and dedicated to building bridges to promote peace in the world than the people I’ve worked with this summer. As a matter of fact, I am now convinced that USIP’s JSD team can not only participate in the conception and the construction of these bridges, but that it has the best tools there are to successfully begin building.
