faysal.mikdadi@facilitateglobal.org
Dr Faysal Mikdadi is Head of Education at FaciIitate Global. He was born in Nablus, Palestine in 1948. He was raised in Beirut, Lebanon where he lived until 1967 when he came to Britain. He has lived in Britain ever since. He trained to become a teacher of English and French. He gained an BA Honours in English and American Literature followed by an MPhil in Comparative Literature and a PhD in English Literature.
He taught English and French to students aged between 11 and 19 before becoming a head of an English department in a secondary school in Ipswich. Faysal went on to become a head of a faculty of communication studies, a senior teacher and member of the senior leadership team in a secondary school. He became an advisory headteacher on cultural diversity and English as an additional language across a shire county. He then became a lead OfSTED inspector of schools and a team inspector of Initial Teacher Training at English universities. Faysal currently inspects teacher training and support academies in improving leadership and in enhancing standards. Occasionally, he helps set up inspection systems, train school inspectors and support private schools to improve their performance – mainly in the Middle East.
Faysal’s two passions in life are literature and peace in Palestine. Amongst his published works are Chateaux en Palestine, Return: The Siege of Beirut, Tamra, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Margaret Thatcher, Return. He particularly enjoys writing poetry (A Return) and fiction (Chateaux en Palestine, Tamra and Return). He has also written extensively on literature and the Middle East over the last thirty years. He enjoys writing short stories based on real life experiences with some of these stories published by various newspapers. My favourite authors are Dickens, Hugo, Austen, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Lampedusa. His second strong interest is to work towards achieving a peaceful settlement to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It is Faysal’s strong belief that this could be done through education. He have always felt that students need to be educated to become critical thinkers whilst seeing the commonalities that we have as human beings rather than to focus on the differences between us which invariably leads to conflict. He also believes that education is the only way that Palestinian students can be taught the necessary democratic values needed to run a successful Palestinian State and to live in peace with our Israeli neighbours.
What attracted me to FG? There are two basic reasons why I wish to make a contribution to FG’s work. I have a strong inbuilt belief that education is the main contributor to achieving a better understanding of each other around the world. As a Palestinian, I passionately believe in focusing on our commonalities as human beings regardless of our backgrounds or of our different faiths. Education invariably leads to such an understanding. I am hoping that, through my small contributions to FG’s work, I may make a difference in effecting a link between disparate peoples which would lead to a better understanding of each other’s narrative. The second reason has to do with the people who created FG, Clive Hambidge and Soraya Boyd. I have been impressed by their work, their aspirations and their vision relating to the use of education to promote peace. I believe that it would be beneficial to FG to contribute a little from my lifetime in education. It will also be beneficial to me to experience such productive work.