Sibelle El Labban

Her experience with ‘Making Research Work’!

Sibelle El Labban, from Lebanon, participated in iCRA’s Making Research Work blended training in 2019. She has held various research-related roles at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the American University of Beirut, focused on nutrition, food security and the water-energy-food-health nexus. Sibelle recently told us how she could make immediate use of her learnings from the iCRA course:

“First off, I was very happy with the interactive nature of the course. This was something I had never experienced before, and I learnt a lot from the mix of practical sessions followed by good discussion.  All the site visits were impressive, and especially the visit to Unilever on the WUR campus gave me inspiration when I went back to my workplace. Richard’s sessions on Action Research were immediately relevant for the new way of thinking taking place at the Faculty: We were in the process of switching to a more interdisciplinary approach, and to increasing our collaboration with business stakeholders.

“And for this, Mariette’s sessions on Active listening and Effective communication were very practical as they gave me the tools I needed to be able to build trust among our stakeholders. Right after the course, I brought different partners together to engage them with our research. I worked on understanding their interests, could better identify and negotiate differing perspectives, and managed to find common ground, improving our collaborations.

“I have worked a lot on writing research project proposals in the past, and was surprised by how helpful Juan’s sessions on proposal-building were. He gave insights on how to better structure and be more strategic in the proposals, and this proved to be of great added value in convincing donors about the Faculty’s work.”

Sibelle is now in the process of moving to Canada, to build a new life and pursue a career in food policy. She is confident that her acquired skills from the iCRA training will keep being useful in her future endeavours. According to Sibelle: “I have never benefited so much from a training as the iCRA Making Research Work course.”

 

– written by Mundie Salm

Mundie Salm

Mundie Salm

Education, Learning + Outreach

  +31 (0)317 422 938

  mundie.salm@icra.global