Mohammed Mukhaimar is co-founder of Sumud Palestine. He is a psychological therapist with an extensive and long experience of treating common mental health problems, including working in the frontlines with traumatised people. He worked for Gaza Community Mental Health Programme before joining the mental health service in the UK. He has been involved in promoting the mental health sector and human rights in Palestine for long time. Currently he is based in Cambridge-UK.
Angela Glendenning worked with offenders for 25 years. When she retired she was a non-executive director of a community health trust for six years. She has been involved in race relations since the early 1990s and for eight years she was chair of PARINS (Partnership Approach to Racist Incidents in North Staffordshire), multi-agency partnership which encouraged and supported victims of racism to report racist incidents and offered advocacy and support to victims.
Pat Mood is a practising Christian with a commitment to social justice. She spent her working life as a social worker with children and families, in hospital care and, for 24 years, in hospice and bereavement care. She visited Israel in 1970 as part of her social work training. After experience in facilitating group-work with bereaved children she collaborated in the development of a workbook to help young people in coping with loss. This book has been translated and adapted for work with bereaved children in Palestinian territories.
Sajid Hashmi MBE is Chief Executive of Voluntary Action Stoke-on-Trent. He is currently a Board member and honorary treasurer of the National Association of Voluntary and Community Action. Sajid formerly worked in the private sector as a finance manager and he was the Field Operations Manager for the Bosnia Aid Committee, coordinating aid deliveries during the Bosnian civil war in 1993. In recognition of his contribution to voluntary and community services he was awarded an MBE in 2010.
Dr Salem Maarabouni has a good knowledge and experience in the voluntary and statutory sector in Lebanon and the United Kingdom. Prior to coming to England to continue his postgraduate studies, he worked as journalist during the Lebanese civil war. He was a senior leader in the scout movement in Lebanon where he successfully managed to build various services in order to support the needs of displaced people during the war.
Dr Maarabouni worked and managed various joint projects between Social Care & Health and Age UK. He is a visiting lecturer to various universities. His research interests are related to mass media, Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies. Currently he works at Salford University and he is in the process of establishing his own business company.