International Trainers

Our goal is to empower women in Gaza to run and manage classes within the hub, so that the project will be 100% Palestinian women run and owned. In the mean time, we have some excellent international trainers providing assistance and conducting the training for trainers in yoga and circus.

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Jenny Higgins

Jenny has been training circus for over 7 years starting in Cork, Ireland while studying for her BA in Political Science. While completing her MA in Human Rights in University College London, she continued her circus training in the National Centre for Circus Arts, with a focus on aerial acrobatics. Over the years she has trained with numerous companies and schools across the world, from Palestine to Rwanda. In Dublin, Jenny teaches for Taking Flight Aerial and Acrobatics and Creation Aerial. Jenny also works in the NGO sector, and it is through her work that she came to start working on circus in Gaza. In 2016, in cooperation with Taking Flight, she received a Culture Ireland grant to create and perform a circus show in Gaza with a local circus school. Her and another trainer, Henrik Gard, travelled to Gaza carrying 62kg of circus equipment and created a show which was attended by over 400 people. Following this experience, which involved working with only boys, Jenny was inspired to create something similar for women and girls. Working with CISS and AISHA, Jenny created the concept of the Women and Girls Yoga and Circus Hub and after a year of planning and outreach the first training for trainers began in February 2018. Jenny continues to work with the boys school also, organising international trainers and fundraising for equipment.

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Susan Church

After more than a decade of Dance training, Susan was introduced to yoga at Drama school. As a valuable part of her professional theatre career, yoga gave focus and physical strength, not to mention a respite from the down-times of the artists world. This lead to the discovery that Yoga and physical therapy was her mission and not the arts industry after all.  In 2000 she took her first Yoga Teacher Training, Followed by two Yoga training courses, Pilates Teacher Training and Massage therapy. Since 2000 she has taken hundreds of courses in Yoga, Pilates and functional movement with people like Ana Forrest, Jason Crandel, Desiree Ramburgh, Godfrey Devereux, Danny Paradise, Gloria Kay, Rebecca Leone, Stott and many more. She is a lead trainer at The Elbowroom Yoga teacher Training in Dublin, Ireland and the Director of Pilates Teacher Training Institute. Susan focused on training yoga teachers to teach with compassion, safety and care as a priority, through the use of your eyes, ears, voice and body to encourage students to find joy through stillness, allowing both the trainer and the students to transform.