Louise Zimanyi/ Canada: Professor, Researcher, Co-Author of ‘Walking Together’ and Former Executive Director of the Consultative Group for ECD

Deeply grateful for the light and energy, humour and singing that Youssef shared in our Consultative Group gatherings, for decades, advancing the rights and well-being of young children and families, building relationships across communities and countries with a deep commitment to equity, dignity, and collective action. He would share with us Darwish poems – this one comforts:

We have on this earth what is worth living, the smell of bread, the waning dawn, moss on a stone.

He lives in the deep orange-red golden colour of the sunset, turquoise waters, the wind, and the mountains.