Rotary Peace Fellow leads education in emergencies across the Middle East

PICTURED: Australian Rotary Peace Fellow Lucienne Heyworth, who studied at Uppsala University in Sweden in 2015-17.

Australian Rotary Peace Fellow Lucienne Heyworth has dedicated her career to delivering education and humanitarian assistance in some of the world’s most complex conflict zones, transforming the futures of young people across the Middle East and beyond.

WORDS Anne Matthews, D9560 Passport Rotary Club, Qld.

Lucienne Heyworth was a Rotary Peace Fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden in 2015-17. She was sponsored by Rotary District 9800. Uppsala University has continually been recognised as one of the world’s top 100 universities globally and runs a specific master’s program focussed on peace and conflict resolution. Lucienne specifically focussed her study on the intersection of education with emergencies, including times of conflict, and has long focussed her academic and professional work on the Middle East.

Lucienne began her working career as a teacher, worked within community organisations and state government, then went on to develop expertise in providing education and humanitarian assistance in areas of conflict. She has also contributed to and led education programs, projects and policy across a number of non-government organisations and United Nations agencies. Her work has focussed on collaboration and work with colleagues in the Middle East and more recently in the South Pacific and Australia.

Lucienne holds a Bachelor of International Relations from Deakin University and an Honours in International Relations from the Australian National University. She also has a Masters in Secondary Education and Teaching from the University of Melbourne and a Diploma in Arabic from the French Institute in Amman, Jordan.

Lucienne worked within Victoria as a secondary school teacher and a policy officer with the Victorian Government. In 2013 she began work based in the Middle East, taking on a role as an Education Specialist, initially in Jordan then later in Lebanon and Turkey. Her programmatic work has focussed on supporting education programming and humanitarian response across Syria, Iraq, Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), Lebanon, Yemen and Türkiye.

Lucienne has supported the development and implementation of the Education in Emergency curriculum in varied locations, seeking to support students, teachers, school leaders and education ministries to deliver educational activities and psychosocial support to young people displaced by conflict or disasters.

These materials and programmes have enabled education responses including the use of makeshift learning spaces to teach and enabling critical spaces to support families’ access to basic needs such as food, hygiene and health.
Lucienne’s impressive peace building work was first acknowledged by Rotary in 2015 when she was successfully nominated by District 9800 to be a Rotary Peace Fellow. In 2019, after completion of her studies as a Rotary Peace Fellow, her ongoing work was further recognised when she was one of six people selected by Rotary International (five Rotarians and one Peace Fellow) to receive the United Nations Award ‘People of Action: Connectors Beyond Borders’. Unfortunately, Lucienne was not able to travel to New York to accept the award, so PDG Grant Hocking attended and accepted the award on her behalf.

Then Rotary International President Mark Maloney noted that “When Rotarians see refugees suffering like this, we do not fall into despair, we act. Rotary members are creating community-based solutions to provide immediate relief, plus resources for refugees’ long-term integration and recovery.”

Dominique Hyde, director of external relations for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), praised Rotary for its work.

“Rotarians have always found ways to help refugees,” she said. “Collectively, you have contributed more than $3 million towards refugee support and relief.”

In 2020, Lucienne and her family were present during the Beirut Blast Explosion in Lebanon. She and her family relocated to Istanbul, Türkiye, shortly after. While in Türkiye, Lucienne continued to work and was responsible for leading an education and humanitarian assistance response to the blast, together with members of the Ministry of Education in Lebanon and Lebanese non-government organisations. She continued to live and work on programming across the Middle East while based in Türkiye throughout 2020-22.

In 2022, Lucienne returned to Melbourne and now has a young family. She remains connected and engaged with education and humanitarian response activities throughout the Middle East region. She has worked with humanitarian organisations in Australia, including CARE Australia, with a focus on humanitarian coordination for the Pacific (Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati and Fiji) and now leads projects within Australian-based education non-for-profit, Ochre Education, where she continues to support efforts to address educational disadvantage through the delivery of free high-quality curriculum materials for Australian schools and teachers.