Between November 13 and 15, 2019, the team of Unity Foundation was honored to receive May Taherzadeh, director of the award-winning short film Mercy’s Blessing and founder of the organization Inspire Courage for Change, which is dedicated to creating films and using them to inspire constructive action for social change.

Unity Foundation works closely with this organization as part of its development education campaign. At the heart of this campaign are workshops in schools, organizations and communities around the film, Mercy’s Blessing, which use the movie as a starting point to have conversations on topics such as sacrifice, privilege, prejudice, equality between women and men and the importance of our choices in standing up for justice.

Question and answer session with 11 to 13 year old youth at the European School.

During her visit, director May Taherzadeh was able to visit the European School in Kirchberg to present her film and to hold a question-and-answer session with 300 students aged 11 to 13. At the International School of Luxembourg, she was also able to interact with teachers, school staff and parents about the campaign. The latter expressed how important it is that their children can participate in workshops around this film and reflect on its themes.

Nicolas Tesch, May Taherzadeh and Fernand Schaber visiting the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

Another highlight of her visit was a meeting with the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs with the Senior Inspector and the Cooperation Officer of the NGO Desk, during which a consultation took place on the next steps for Unity Foundation’s development education campaign. Efforts to extend the scope and impact of this campaign are already under way: on the one hand, the training of workshop facilitators* to develop the capacity of an increasing number of people to organize workshops in various settings; on the other hand, to carry out series of workshops within the same group of young people (instead of only one workshop), to explore the themes deeper and include the artistic activities in the program.

Several panelists discussed the impact the workshops have had in Luxembourg.

Finally, May Taherzadeh’s stay in Luxembourg was crowned by the event “Youth – Protagonists of Social Change”. During this evening, the audience was able to watch the film and have a Q&A with the film director. The evening also included the testimonies of three people who have been using the film and conducting workshops in their respective structures: Marthese Lufi, at the European School; Veronika Blockhuis at the COSP (Centre d’Orientation Socio-Professionnelle) and Ruhiyeh Thabet in a refugee camp. They shared about the positive impact the film and workshops have had on their participants. These testimonies highlighted the fact that offering young people opportunities to reflect on deep questions helps to awaken their aspiration to become actors of positive change. As Marthese Lufi said: “It’s amazing how ready young people are to help others. We just need to give them a chance, we need to empower them. Otherwise, they try to find other means of fulfilling their deeper needs, when the deeper needs can be satisfied by just helping others.”

May Taherzadeh sharing insightful stories about the making of the “Mercy’s Blessing” short film.

May Taherzadeh’s visit only strengthened Unity Foundation’s commitment to this campaign and allowed more people to become engaged in a conversation aimed at helping young people to become protagonists of social change in Luxembourg.

*For more information on facilitators’ trainings, please contact Unity Foundation at info@unityfoundation.lu