Khaled Elkouz is the regional director for the AFSC's work in the Middle East, and has been working in the Middle East in the management of development and emergency response programs. Khaled is experienced in areas of education, peacebuilding, and youth empowerment. Before joining AFSC, Khaled worked with the International Organization for Migration on camp management and camp coordination in humanitarian response crises in the Middle East region. Other positions held include, country director for Right To Play International, a global organization that works on protection, education, and empowerment of children, and programs manager for Care International working on resilience and development project in the Middle East.
Joyce Ajlouny joined AFSC as general secretary in 2017. A Quaker leader who is committed to help bring peace and justice to oppressed and vulnerable communities globally, Joyce brings to AFSC a depth of experience in international development and relief, education and 30 years of non-profit management. Under her leadership AFSC is entering its second century with a bold strategic revisioning and planning initiative that set organizational goals for the next decade (2020-2030).
June 28 marks the 53rd anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in response to pervasive police violence targeting queer and trans communities. Five decades later, LGBTQ+ youth and adults are disproportionately overrepresented at every stage of the American criminal punishment system.
For the past year, I have been conducting research around the needs of LGBTQ+ people who are incarcerated and detained, developing a toolkit of resources for AFSC and ally organizations. Here are some of the key takeaways from this project.
Keyvan Shafiei is the Leading Edge Fellow at AFSC, a yearlong research project sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. Prior to AFSC, Keyvan completed a PhD in Philosophy at Georgetown University, where he wrote a dissertation about the cultural underpinnings of mass incarceration in the United States.
AFSC New Mexico’s Farm to School project is an effort to create a replicable model for school food procurement that supports local producers for sourcing fresh, healthy produce for school children. The project was initiated to direct public funds to schools to purchase food produced by local farmers, prioritizing beginner farmers in training.