Our impact

Faces of Change emerged from an EU funded program ‘Unleashing the power of refugee women’, in which we reached more than 100 women across 4 countries and worked with 5 NGO’s: Intercultureel Vrouwen Centrum Antwerpen, Belgium ; Gender Equality Center, Denmark; Reading Refugee Support Group, United Kingdom ; Women Connect First, Cardiff, Wales.

We worked with CSRO Syria (Civil Society Relief Organization) and SPARK to teach on the Basics of Entrepreneurship of 20 Syrian activists involved in reconstruction of civil society.

We worked with Haella Stichting and Alertfonds voor Jongeren on a program for 15 youth from conflict affected areas, geared towards empowerment and a program ‘Working towards work’ for 10 women from conflict affected areas.

We developed a program on Social Entrepreneurship for the Dutch NGO Quality Centre Utrecht in collaboration with the Municipality from Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Together with the Draagvlakfonds and an independent documentary maker, Manuela Maiguashca, we developed video fragments aimed at awareness and advocacy to highlight the so-called ‘Syrian crisis’ and the European response to it via the personal story of the founder of Faces of Change.

Faces of Change was invited to the World Humanitarian Summit – for the first time organized by the United Nations after WWII – which was held in Istanbul in May 2016. We presented our work and draft to a group of 30 participants of the workshop.

On returning we initiated a series of dialogues. We had a campaign around hashtag #Diary Syria/#Diary Europe, where Syrians and Europeans were portrayed with quotes related to the situation. More than 30 people were photographed for this purpose. A book was made with these portraits.

We were invited to the International ESTIEM (European Students Industrial Engineering and Management) Network, which consists of 80 universities which serves 60.000 students. The theme for 2015 at the Council Meeting ESTIEM in Vienna was Syrian Changemakers.   Faces of Change was invited to present the Syrian Changemakers Project during a workshop which addresses the refugee crisis in Europe.

We gave 8 Trainings for 20 Syrian status holders for the set-up of a Syrian Cultural House in Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. See http://synl.eu/synl/

For the Dutch Refugee Council we trained – a 4-day training course geared at empowerment and participation – hundreds of refugees from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria over a period of 2 years. The outcome of all the trainings was that participants signed a Participation Agreement in which they agreed to uphold Dutch values and expect support in return to enter the labour market and participate in society as a volunteer or through a paid job.

We have trained more than 60 people worldwide as trainers on impact leadership and peacebuilding through our program ImpactLeaders international. Many projects geared at peacebuilding are being implemented. Our book has been translated in Spanish and will be launched in the fall of 2022.