The Team 2014
Lisa Cooper
Leadership Foundation
Rakia Bihi
Leadership Foundation
Lisa is a social entrepreneur who has worked for over 30 years in the private sector (International Playtex, Alcatel Telecom and Thales Communication). In 2006 she followed her passion for diversity, joining the Norwegian Directorate of Intergration and Diversity, in the public sector. In 2008 Lisa started Leadership Foundation with the goal of building a business focused on implementing diversity through projects, consulting and research.
Leadership Foundation has since its conception built a PROJECT portfolio that focuses on promoting individuals with immigrant background in Norway through Top 10, promoting artists with immigrant backgrounds in the Nordics through New Nordic Art, assisting business in realizing the benefits of a diverse workforce through Diversity Charter and through NORSOMbro and the Nordic Somali Youth Summit made a contribution to building bridges for the Somali population in Norway and the Nordics.
Ronny Mutisya
Leadership Foundation
Yusra Osman
Creative Minds CPH
Yusra Osman
Creative Minds CPH &
Danish Care In Somalia
Yusra Osman, studies Religion Science at Copenhagen University, and has completed courses at Spanish and Spanish-American studies at Southern University of Denmark.
She started out volunteering for Women’s Immigrant Center, who helps women with different backgrounds by facilitating social activities, health awareness, and computer help. Yusra is also a member of a non-profit organization by the name of ‘Danish Care in Somalia’, who mainly help families and orphan-children in the Central and South part of Somalia. DCIS focuses on helping these areas in becoming a better place to live by building wells, schools for women and children, orphanages. Yusra is chairman for Creative Minds CPH an association, which was responsible for two projects: a photo-workshop for 4 boys and 4 girls called ‘Somali Youth Pictures CPH’, and a documentary called Somali Youth Campaign. It’s a documentary where Somali Youth from Odense and Copenhagen in Denmark. Yusra finds different cultures, traditions, historical narratives and poetry very interesting. In the future she would like to work full-time with these kinds of subjects.
Barkad Mohamoud
DUF
Barkad was born in Somalia and raised in Denmark. He’s been always interested in politics which is also clearly reflected in his past work experience. Since he was 16 he has worked in a wide range of organizations and projects that aim to promote democracy, increase voter participation and boost integration. Among other things, since 2008 he served as a role model for young Somalis. He has been Vice President of The Danish Youth Council which is a council founded by the Danish government, in cooperation with experts to facilitate and advise policies about integration policy. Barkad enjoys being busy and he’s almost done with his master's in Economics at Copenhagen University. Currently he’s working with DUF to promote voter participation among ethnic minority youth in the forthcoming elections. Furthermore, Barkad is a project leader in entrepreneurship and skills development projects and educational speaker.
Mohamed Aden
Politikens Akademi
Samira Mohamed
Sisterhood
Mohamed is an active social speaker who always perseveres to take the bull by the horns and to discuss how the Somali community can maintain and develop the good role models among the social housing areas – also known as “Ghetto’s”, which many immigrants live today, and how others can contribute actively in society through art, culture and social debate to provide more space for the positive stories, leading good role models and in general to get immigrants represented in society as genuine, existing people with valuable voices that resonates in society which frequently come to expression as nothing but tiresome and negative statistics and arguments. He is an active member within the Somali community in Denmark, and he was also responsible for the charity assembly of “Support party for Somalia” in 2011 along with Ayan Mahmoud (Editor of Ethniqa Magazine) in cooperation with the Danish Refugee Council. In addition, he established in collaboration with the Danish newspaper Politiken, “Politiken’s Academy”.
Born in Somalia and raised in Denmark. After finishing College major in accounts and international economics, Samira took a year off to pursue her life and experience the globalized world. She currently lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she’s an active volunteer in various organizations – and an active volunteer that has a strong belief in giving back to the community and learning from one another to make a difference. She has an International marketing and communication knowledge in the baggage and in the health field. Five sisters and Samira set up The Sisterhood Organization that focuses on with three strategies: role models, supporters and educators. In order to create a change in the Somali community. Fashion has been part of her life. She loves fashion and effortlessly she gets inspiration from individuals, culture and almost everything. It is something that she truly believes in and very passionate about it. At the moment she’s in the process of making herself well-known in the social media and in the stylist industry. She’s the brand ambassador for RVK- Retro Vintage Kolektion from South Africa. Her ultimate dream and goals are to become a stylist/ trendsetter and designer.
Iman Mohamed
Sisterhood
Iman Mohamed has been an active in the Somali Diaspora community for many years, not only in Denmark but also abroad. As a master student in Molecular Biomedicine, Iman has taken a very keen interest in two aspects of the Somali community; namely, the health issues those are prominent within the Somali community, and the importance of education amongst the youth. Her strength is seeing opportunities and identifying the most successful approach for the most optimal outcome. Furthermore, through her community work with the youth she has enhanced her communication and interpersonal skills as she often had to communicate with a variety of people from different backgrounds. In addition, through her education she has developed strong analytical skills. She is confident with the support of the community that she can build a strong network of educated youth in a variety of fields, and addresses some of the barriers that exist between the Somali community in Denmark and the public sector as well as the private sector in Denmark. Iman has an aspiration one day to provide medical education and service in Somalia in order to help and tackle the health issues.
Taairo Mohammed
Sisterhood
Taairo is a social person whose capability of supporting communities is enormous and has worked at Calamus private school as a secretary with experience of administrational work with the Somali parents. She’s loyal, talented, and caring person who desires making a difference into the life activities of emerging Somali children. She’s open-minded, patient, and supportive towards other people, especially towards children and families or those who suffer from disabilities. Dealing with the community needs experience, education, and communication. All the above mentioned had been struggled by Ms. Taairo especially communicating with the families. Taairo´s goal is to explore the basic concepts of effective communication which can improve the relationship between parents and their children in the Somali community.
Taairo Mohamed has studied Retail Buyer Management course and her mission is to work for success in the Somalia community.
Hafsa Jama
Danish Human Appeal
Hibaaq Abdirashid Creative Minds CPH
Hafsa Jama, is doing her master in Culture, Communication and Globalization at Aalborg University, specializing in International Migration and ethnic Relations. She has been involved with a wide range of community projects – and organizations as well as non-profit organization as a volunteer. Most of them were targeting young people with different ethnic background living in Odense, taking up issues around education, integration, politics, society etc. aiming to motivate and encourage them to become active members of their own communities. Recently Hafsa became board members of the organization Danish Human Appeal, who runs development projects in Somalia. This comes with a special interest in ‘development problematic’ in African countries in general, which motivated her even further during her development classes in African studies at Copenhagen University.
Hibaaq Abdirashid is 22-year-old and she’s an audiology student. She’s has been living in Odense, Denmark since 1996.
She was the leader of an organization in Odense called Somali Youth, which promoted practices of tolerance and peaceful coexistence among the diverse communities through education and helped empower the youth in Odense in many different ways. While representing Somali Youth, Hibaaq and 8 other Somali-Scandinavians were chosen by The American Embassy to travel to Minnesota. The idea was to be inspired by the large Somali population there that was doing great work in their community. Today she’s currently working with the organization called Creative Minds CPH, which is founded by Yusra Osman, and their work was inspired by their Minnesota trip. Creative Minds is an organization created mainly for the Somali youth but it focuses on Somali children as well. Its purpose is to inspire both kids and youngsters to be creative. They organized workshops for children where they were taught how to use a camera also projects for the youth. They filmed, interviewed, and took pictures of the Somali youth in Copenhagen. A similar project will be done in Odense soon. The youth project will result in a documentary.
Marian Hassan Woman2Woman
Marian is active member at woman2woman diaspora action group. She currently holds activities sessions for young age 12-16. Also is involved in social event aspect of creating social event.
She dedicates her time in investing younger children. Marian has become an active in social question that youth face, where she has several times participated in several debates that tackle integration and several dialogue discussions about youth issues and women issues. Currently is full time student in the nursing program at the University of Malmo.
Norwegian-Somali, 21 years old from Oslo, Norway, Studies Bachelor in the Norwegian Welfare System at University College of Oslo and Akershus. Rakia Works also at Leadership Foundation in Norway as advisor. She took HIPP training in Amsterdam in 2012 to become a facilitator. HIPP is a method that you can use in conflict solving and it’s a process that teaches you how to do. She held a HIPP workshop at NSYS 2013 and some courses in Norway for Somali youth. In 2012 she went to Minneapolis for a study trip with Somali youth from the Nordic region. She is also the chair women for Somali Student Association in Norway.
Ayan Hussein Sisterhood
Ayan Hussein has long been an active advocate for promoting higher education amongst Somalis both in Denmark and also abroad. She has a keen interest in nurturing leadership skills amongst young people. She has previously run a number of workshops in Aarhus aiming to motivate young Somalis into higher education and highlighting the various routes possible to take towards a ultimate successful career. Through that she has established a strong network of young aspiring Somalis. Moreover, having worked as a Translator in Århus, Ayan had the opportunity to communicate with many members of the Somali community about their everyday struggles and worries, and have gotten a very unique insight as a result. Subsequently, she has studied abroad, completing her Bachelor of Law (LLB) in London, and her Masters of Law (LLM) in International Commercial Law from University of Aberdeen. Ayan brings a range of key skills in order to advocate for the overall well being and progress of Somalis. Having experienced various communities, combined with her passion, she hopes to bring innovative approach in encouraging higher education and leadership skills amongst the youth.
Saladin Hussein
Somalisk Ungdom i Danmark
Born in Somalia, raised in Denmark, Hussein Abdi Hirey has long been active in Somali promoting activities in Copenhagen. He studies Library and Information at Copenhagen University. In fact the first Somali in that faculty. Although having a good average in high school, he choose library and information science, because he sees this field to be very important to his people and where he origins from. Giving people knowledge is what he want to work with, and promoting library in Somalia.
Founder and CEO of Part Time Kenya Limited, a social enterprise set up to build a Labor Market Information System (LMIS) in collaboration with the Kenyan Government, to address the high level of Youth Unemployment. Recently completed a Bachelor of Science in Mechatronics Engineering at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He originates from Nairobi, Kenya where he is an active member of AIESEC, an international platform for tertiary level students and recent graduates to explore and develop their leadership potential. Intern at Leadership Foundation responsible for IT and Project Management.
Rahma Ali
Rahma Ali has a BSc in Social Anthropology and a MSc. in Medical Anthropology from University College London. Her expertise is around implementing project work, research and data analysis. Both her research papers received distinction grades and covered issues within the Somali minority community. Her bachelor thesis examined the changing gender roles of Somali women in the diaspora, highlighting throughout her paper the change in power dynamics and its subsequent effects on the family structure.
She has 5 years of work experience from non-governmental organizations and in community development. She has worked as a Community convener for the Lokahi Foundation that facilitated discussions on radicalization issues in inner-city London communities along with the Metropolitan Police Department. In addition, she has worked as a Community facilitator for Changing Lives Project, a mental health organization where she carried out service-user surveys. Moreover, she has been a Health Campaigner on behalf of Forward UK – Young People Speak OUT, where she planned events and campaigns to raise awareness of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), particularly to health care professionals and local councils.