Jessie Castello is in her second year of grad school, putting the finishing touches on her Master of Peace and Conflict Studies degree. Before arriving at the University of Waterloo to study in the MPACS program, Jessie graduated from the University of Toronto with a double major in International Relations and Peace, Conflict, and Justice in 2016. She felt passionate about continuing her peace education, which brought her to Grebel.
“After my undergrad, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue academia or more practical approaches to peacework, and MPACS provides a good balance of the two. It has a flexible enough structure that you can try your hand at different things you might be interested in and figure out for yourself what your interests really are. MPACS has been practical and hands-on, which I really appreciate.”
With options to do an internship, to work towards skill training, and to develop research skills, MPACS offers a wide variety of ways for students to customize their degree. Jessie chose to take part in every one of those options. She is currently taking workshops within the Conflict Management Certificate Program, allowing her to practice mediation skills with trained professionals. Previously in her degree, Jessie took a course on Peace Research, which required the completion of a major project intended to develop students’ capacity to apply research, analysis, and writing skills towards a practical objective. Her research focused on the underlying forces fueling ethno-territorial conflict, using the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar as a case study.
While she valued her courses immensely, it was the internship that had the most impact. Jessie spent three months in Johannesburg, South Africa working as an intern with CIVICUS, an international alliance focused on strengthening citizen action and civil society globally. Their mandate is to work to protect civil space, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the right to peaceful assembly. CIVICUS tracks governments that are not allowing their citizens open civil space to ensure there is someone keeping tabs on these human rights violations. Advocacy campaigns are then done in specific regions where there is a threat to civic space.
As a policy and research intern, Jessie worked with the Advocacy and Campaigns and Civic Space Research clusters within CIVICUS. Her work involved assisting with research updates for the CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks the state of civic space in 195 countries. She also assisted with a range of other research and advocacy projects focused on the protection of civic freedoms.
With this new experience under her belt, Jessie is looking forward to what her education can offer her. “My internship with CIVICUS gave me hands-on experience with research and advocacy work in the human rights field—an invaluable addition to my MPACS degree. After this experience I feel more confident and well-equipped, like I have much more of a sense of direction. I know I can take the skills I’ve learned in MPACS and apply them to a career.”
