The Impact of Rotary. Member Spotlight: Mura Rike Cammann
“After the war broke out in Ukraine in February, a question kept popping up in the rotary club’s group chat; is there something we can do as a qualified peacebuilder club within Rotary”
Background
Mura grew up in Bremen, in northern Germany. When Mura was 17 years old, at the end of high school, she lived for a whole year in Canada. This was an extraordinary experience for her because she learned a lot while abroad, such as accommodating to a new culture or traveling alone. This first experience abroad gave her the taste of moving. Hence, for her undergraduate studies in journalism, she went abroad for a semester, but this time to Malaysia. For her master’s degree, Mura moved around Europe and studied International Relations.
Mura joined the MBBI community quite recently. Thanks to her work with the Rotary Club Berlin Platz der Republik and the peacebuilding community, she noticed that the two organizations were associated, so she decided to join. One thing that Mura immensely appreciate regarding MBBI is that MBBI manages to connect mediators all around the world that often work at the community level. In her words: “it’s an organization that is very international but very grassroots connected at the same time. As I am very active at the local level, this is a great entry point for me, even though I am not a mediator”.
Professionally, Mura worked in civil protection, for example on an EU project strengthening crisis management capacity in the Baltic Sea region. Nowadays, she works at the Johanniter International Assistance at the international level.
Volunteer with Rotary
The club that Mura is part of was only created in 2018. She joined because two of her friends reached out to her when they wanted to launch it, and she was curious to try it out. After a few years there, she now really appreciates the focus on peace and the involvement of civil society.
They are also associated with the Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP) and organize joint training on positive peace together, allowing people to get some ideas on how to get involved and active in peacebuilding.
Coming in September, the 11th to be precise, Mura and her colleagues at Rotary are organizing a concert with the “music for peace initiative” in Berlin where participants will be awarded a peace prize, so check it out if you’re in Europe this September and wondering what to do!
Special focus on Ukraine
After the war in Ukraine escalated, Mura and her friends at the Rotary Club tried to think of a way they could be helpful “After the war broke out in February, a question kept popping up in the rotary club’s group chat; is there something we can do as a qualified peacebuilder club”. Mura and other members got organized and used their network and rotary channels like the Facebook page to find host families. They developed a platform that helps match Ukrainian refugees with homes across Europe. They worked closely with Rotaract, the youth organization of Rotary. Aside from finding a home, they also started fundraising to create different booklets. One of them is for children with translations from Ukrainian to German. Another one has several useful images in everyday life, so people who don’t speak the language can point to the image to help them get around when they’re unable to use a translating app.
Mura was part of all these projects, but she wasn’t working alone! During the interview, Mura mentioned Peter Konhäusner, Jörg Max Haas, and Iryna Bushmina as people that were very active during different parts of the process.
Article by Sarah Vorms, MBBI Writer