What does it take to keep fighting when everything has been taken from you?

Over the past two decades, Afghanistan slowly built something new. Girls went to school. Women went to work. Women were elected to parliament. And then in 2021, it was erased. No school for girls. No work. No voice. Within hours of the Taliban's return, Afghan women broke open the locks of their schools anyway. They are still fighting today — inside Afghanistan and across Afghan communities in exile — and their fight sits at the frontline of the global struggle for women's and girls' rights.

This episode asks what that fight looks like from Geneva, from exile, from a late-night tram ride home from the library — when you realise you are safe, your daughters are safe, and more than 20 million women are not. It asks what intercultural solidarity actually requires. And it asks what it feels like — in your body — when your rights are taken away, and when they are given back.

Our guest is Bahishta Nothani. She grew up in Afghanistan under the Taliban, went to school in secret, and eventually made her way to Geneva where she became a dentist and co-founded the Afghanistan Women's Rights Association (AWRA). She speaks not from a distance but from lived experience — of what it means to have your rights stripped away, and to refuse to stop fighting regardless.

BE THE CHANGE

Talk about the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan — in your meetings, your gatherings, your everyday conversations. Wherever you are, whoever you are with. Bahishta's ask is simple: do not let the world look away. The energy of human beings, she says, is something no force can match. Keep the conversation going.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES

Afghanistan Women's Rights Association (AWRA): https://awra.ch/

👤 ABOUT THE GUEST Bahishta Nothani grew up in Afghanistan under the Taliban, where girls were forbidden from going to school. She went anyway — in secret, across borders, and at great personal risk. Evacuated and granted refugee status in Switzerland, she trained as a dentist in Geneva, learned French, and built a new life — one defined by the same refusal to give up that carried her through childhood. Today she is a mother of two and the co-founder of AWRA, which supports underground schools, health clinics, and shelters for thousands of women and children inside Afghanistan. She speaks not only from expertise, but from lived experience of what it means to have your rights taken away — and to keep fighting regardless.

📋 SHARE YOUR REFLECTION

Five questions.Your responses help us understand what's shifting — and make the case for more stories like this one 👉https://forms.gle/mf8MVX3cUsqYECrL9

💧 JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Share your drops of water: #HummingbirdCollective

Subscribe for more stories of everyday courage

The Hummingbird Collective is co-produced by the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, supported through Sarah Noble's participation in the Youth for Peace: UNESCO Intercultural Leadership Programme (2025–2026). Guests speak from their own experience and perspective, which may not reflect the views of the show or its partners.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

A solo episode about one the most powerful tool any of us has — and why how we tell our stories determines whether people freeze or fly.

Stories aren't just entertainment. They're the original metaverse, ancient survival technology, and the difference between fear that contracts and hope that expands. When you hear a fact, two areas of your brain light up. When you hear a story, your whole brain activates through a process called neural coupling — you don't just listen to the hummingbird, you become the hummingbird.

This solo episode unpacks why storytelling matters for peace, what science says about emotional contagion, and how the way we frame a narrative can either shut people down or open them up. It's about asset framing vs. deficit framing, the danger of a single story, and what it means to tell stories for good — with care, consent, and dignity intact.

Sarah reflects on her work with the Peace Talks and the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, where people share real stories of trust, reconciliation, and ethical leadership across divides. Not institutions. Not policies. People. Because when someone stands up and tells a true story of rebuilding what was broken, something shifts: if they can do it, so can I.

This is not about naive optimism. It's about deliberate hope — the ability to imagine a different reality and believe it's possible. Fear freezes us. Hope is a survival instinct. And in a world drowning in doom, we get to choose what we amplify.

The bigger animals will always say the fire is too big and your wings are too small. Tell the story anyway.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES

Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation: https://www.caux.iofc.org

The Peace Talks: https://www.peacetalks.net/

SHARE YOUR REFLECTION Five questions. Your responses help us understand what's shifting — and make the case for more stories like this one. 👉 https://forms.gle/mf8MVX3cUsqYECrL9

💧 JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Share your drops of water: #HummingbirdCollective Subscribe for more stories of everyday courage. —

The Hummingbird Collective is co-produced by the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, supported through Sarah Noble's participation in the Youth for Peace: UNESCO Intercultural Leadership Programme (2025–2026).

Guests speak from their own experience and perspective, which may not reflect the views of the show or its partners.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

A story about a young Syrian refugee who stopped waiting, started building, and now carries peace education to hundreds of young people. Displacement is not the end of this story. A question that belongs to all of us: what happens when we stop waiting for someone else to fix things — and start building them ourselves?

Over 100 million people have been displaced worldwide. Most are told to wait — for papers, for permission, for someone to open a door. This episode sits with what happens when someone refuses.

Mohammad Shahadat has started over more than once, in more than one country. Born in Syria, raised in Abu Dhabi, he returned to his homeland one year before the 2011 uprising began. Two decades of displacement followed. Eight scholarship rejections. Limited choices at every turn. And yet, a refusal to stop moving forward. When UNESCO offered him a scholarship, it opened a question: what if young refugees and the communities hosting them could actually understand each other?

In 2019, he founded the Youth for Peace Initiative in Amman to find out. They thought it might take years to reach 100 participants. They now have over 300. The name hasn't changed — because the beginning, he says, should always remind you of what's possible when you just start. A place on the Kofi Annan Changemakers Programme brought him to Geneva — and changed everything. He almost didn't board the plane. He got on anyway.

This conversation is about peace education and what it actually means — not the absence of war, but the presence of understanding. About global citizenship built through lived experience. And resilience not as inspiration, but as a daily practice of thinking about others, building bridges of trust across every difference that the world tries to make permanent.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES

Youth for Peace Initiative: Instagram, Linkedin

UNESCO Intercultural Leadership Programme

Kofi Annan Foundation Changemakers Programme

👤 ABOUT THE GUEST

Mohammad Shahadat is a Syrian peacebuilder, youth advocate, and founder of the Youth for Peace Initiative. After living a long refugee journey, he transformed his personal struggle into a lifelong mission to advance education, intercultural dialogue, and youth inclusion in peace processes. Selected as a Kofi Annan Changemaker in 2022, he is a UNESCO Youth for Peace Leader and an active member of the UNESCO Global Youth Community, the One Young World Switzerland National Board, and the EU Jeel Connect Network.

📋 SHARE YOUR REFLECTION

Five questions. Your responses help us understand what's shifting — and make the case for more stories like this 👉 https://forms.gle/mf8MVX3cUsqYECrL9

💧 JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Share your drops of water: #HummingbirdCollective

The Hummingbird Collective is co-produced by the Caux Initiatives of Change Foundation, supported through Sarah Noble's participation in the Youth for Peace: UNESCO Intercultural Leadership Programme (2025–2026). Guests speak from their own experience and perspective, which may not reflect the views of the show or its partners.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.