On behalf of alQaws’ National Leadership, Staff, and Board of Directors, it is our great pleasure to announce that alQaws activist Haneen Sader is joining alQaws’ professional staff team as our new director beginning January 2021.
This step comes as a result of a long process that alQaws undertook to prepare for this leadership transition. This intentional and collective decision is contextualized within our values, principles, and legacy of working with queer issues in Palestine. We don’t see this process as merely a change of directors, but a major transition in roles and responsibilities across the different organizational structures. This transition also reflects evolving political values related to sustainability, growth, and our commitment to providing opportunities to younger generations to continue making change.
At the beginning of 2020, alQaws established a Leadership Transition Committee composed of representatives from alQaws’ Board of Directors, staff, and national leadership, in addition to an external consultant. The committee led the search and recruitment process throughout the spring and summer of 2020. In addition to the public vacancy announcement, the committee prioritized encouraging alQaws’ activists to consider the new position. Many people applied for the vacancy from within alQaws’ circles and outside of them. The committee reviewed all the applications, conducted interviews, and finally selected the candidate most suitable for the role; Haneen Sader.
Sader (30 years old, based in Haifa) will start her role as alQaws Director in January 2021 with great energy and enthusiasm. Sader is part of alQaws’ national leadership, where she contributed effectively and notably for the past five years. More specifically, Sader was a trainer in alQaws’ professional training program working with civil society organizations and movements across Palestine. She also served as a member of alQaws’ Board of Directors for the last four years.
Haneen Sader reflected on what taking on this responsibility means for her and alQaws; “after working for ten years in the field of computer engineering, it is time to apply my capacities and skills to serve a cause that is important to us as a community and touches me as an individual. I am proud to lead alQaws, an influential organization with its staff, local and national leadership, and allies towards building a community that embraces and speaks to all its members.”
During these times we appreciate and thank Haneen Maikey, outgoing Director, who will transition out by the end of 2020. Maikey co-founded alQaws with many activists and friends across Palestine back in 2001. Maikey acted in different positions within alQaws over the past two decades; most notably serving as alQaws Director since 2008. Maikey led alQaws with outstanding organizational, political, and strategic capacities, steering alQaws to become a prominent Palestinian organization with a deep and clear social and political impact.
We share with you the news of this major transition with full enthusiasm for the progress it represents, and great anticipation moving forward to the next phase. Your support as activists and allies is crucial as alQaws moves forward to a new era of queer organizing in Palestine.
More details on the leadership transition and its political and organizational meaning for our movement will appear in alQaws’ 2020 annual report: “Social & Organizational Transformation: A Queer Organizing Milestone in Palestine" to be published in December 2020.
We are excited to welcome Haneen Sader as our new Director! Thank you Haneen Maikey for your tireless years and leadership!