Breakout spotlight: Instigate Joy + Activate Justice with Diana K. Oestreich + Saadia Qureshi
We’re honored to welcome The Waging Peace Project’s Diana K. Oestreich, veteran, peace activist, and author, to present a breakout session at Rural Assembly Everywhere this spring. The breakout, “Instigate Joy + Activate Justice,” will be an interactive storytelling session designed to inspire you and instigate more joy and infectious courage as you live and go about your work.
Attendees will be taught by peacemaker Saadia Qureshi and hear stories of how she faces adversity and uses joy to keep showing up and doing the work. Learn more about the session below!
Register now to receive updates about how to sign up for this breakout before the virtual gathering begins May 10th.
About the breakout
Instigate Joy + Activate Justice
Led by Diana K. Oestreich and Saadia Qureshi
Courage requires us to plant our feet on two things: that joy is our birthright and everyone under the sun deserves it. Do you feel like stress is eating at you or have you silently waved the white flag? Showing up is hard work which is why we can’t do it without joy. You deserve to feel joy too, everybody does. Uncover your own stories and tools that fuel you in this interactive storytelling session. Root yourself in your stories and your strengths that will inspire you and instigate more joy and infectious courage as you live and go about your work.
This breakout session will give attendees a place to share how tired or worn out they are and map out their own tools of joy to integrate into their lives and work, increasing their resilience, and ability to connect across lines of difference and feel energized!
About Diana Oestreich
Diana Oestreich is a combat soldier who found the posture of peace on the battlefield of the Iraq war. She heard God’s call to love her enemies in the most unlikely place: on the battlefield of Iraq. Diana is a Peacemaker, Author, Activist, Veteran, and former sexual assault nurse. Speaking across the country she empowers us to identify our own rural, urban, political or religious divides to cross our own “enemy lines” in order to remake the world and heal all that’s tearing us apart.
She’s appeared on multiple podcasts and blogs discussing Justice, faith, peacemaking, refugees, anti-racism, activism with kids and how her posture of love shapes how she parents and shows up for her neighbors.
Diana, her partner Jake and their two sons, Bridger and Zelalem live along the shores of Lake Superior on unceded Ojibwe land. They are an Ethiopian-American family woven together through adoption and a shared love for bad jokes and competitive card games.
About Saadia Qureshi
After graduating as an Environmental Engineer, Saadia worked for the government to ensure compliance of landfills and power generation facilities. She took a pause to raise her family and volunteer for several non-profits, ultimately discovering herself by being an active, responsible citizen in her hometown of Oviedo, Florida. Saadia believes meaningful friendships can be found in unexpected places. Her work to show neighbors how similar we are regardless of differences led her to peacemaking. Currently she works as a Gathering Coordinator at Preemptive Love where Saadia hopes to spread this message to communities nationwide. If she’s not participating at an event around town, you may find Saadia picking up after her two girls, reminding her husband where he left his wallet, or saving the last three bananas for her famous banana bread.
