Students joined a brown bag discussion with Simon van Melick, programme manager at SPARK, a Netherlands-based NGO that develops higher education and entrepreneurship programs to empower young, ambitious people to lead their conflict-affected societies into prosperity. He explained how a youth initiative started by his classmates expanded into a worldwide effort to bring education and job training into societies that were struggling with violent conflict. IPE had previously worked with SPARK to teach 30 youth computer coding skills in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.