Our Executive Team
Rudy Scholaert, M.A.
As the founder and president of Eagle Down, Rudy Scholaert has committed himself to help strengthen young community leaders — encouraging and equipping them to stand firm against destruction, chaos, intolerance and indifference. It is Rudy’s goal to support young leaders from troubled regions around the world and help them to become positive and constructive influences in their own communities.
Each one of us has a story. Our own stories and experiences often affect who we are or who we hope to become. They challenge our thoughts and emotions. Our stories have the power to change lives. In 1999, while serving as Program Director for international emergency relief operations in Mitovica, Kosovo, Rudy Scholaert’s story took a dramatic turn.
On a cold autumn day, months after the NATO-led bombing of that region, Rudy was asked to negotiate the release of two bodies from a hospital located in the predominately Serbian North side of the city and transport them across the Ibar River to the Southern, Albanian side. The bodies were those of a mother and her daughter, a seven year old girl named Edona. For Rudy, the physical state of the deceased, made real an intense and brutal war that had been waged throughout the land.
Release being granted, Rudy was left to load the stiffened bodies of Edona and her mother into his jeep. Along with UN police and a NATO military escort he was able to transport them, across a bridge which separated the Serbian and Albanian communities, in time for their family to provide them with the dignity of a proper Muslim burial.
This marked a day Rudy would not soon forget, opening a new chapter in his own story. The Eagle Down Foundation is dedicated to Edona, Sami, Sadet and countless more children whose lives have not been spared in conflicts around the world. May their memories never fade . . .
Rudy holds a Bachelor of Science (Applied) degree from the Royal Military College of Canada and a Master of Arts degree in Human Security and Peacebuilding from Royal Roads University. Rudy’s published works include a paper written for “Visions in Conflict – International Perspectives On Values and Enmity” published and edited by the American Psychological Association’s Brian C. Alston (Division 36 – Psychology of Religion). The paper was entitled “Through Tribulation and Despair: Understanding the Serbian Orthodox Church in Today’s Newly Independent Kosovo”. He has also attended the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, USA. It was here that Rudy further studied the role of religion as part of Track 3 Diplomatic efforts.
From 1999 to 2004, during a leave of absence from his present job, Rudy served as World Vision International’s Peacebuilding Program Director in Kosovo. In this capacity, he acted as an Advisor and Program Manager for a number of Civil Society Development and Peacebuilding projects across the province. It was at this time that Rudy became the driving force behind the Council for the Peace & Tolerance program in the city of Mitrovica. Rudy also lead a number of conflict mitigation projects in Kosovo funded by the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Swiss Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs.
Rudy completed the Advanced Peacekeeping Course at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Canada and is a “Local Capacities for Peace” (LCP/DNH) trainer. Rudy has also been a member of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre’s external faculty and helped to develop and launch a new Core Competencies for Civilians in Peace Operations training program.
Rudy has helped train senior military personnel from a number of South American countries at the Joint Peace Operations Training Centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In addition, he has served with the Canadian military under the auspices of the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO) in Ethiopia during that country’s civil war in 1988.
Currently, Rudy is a senior executive at Aastra Technologies Ltd.
Fatmire Feka
As a Muslim Albanian from the ethnically divided municipality of Mitrovica, Kosovo, Fatmire Feka made the choice, at a very young age, to dedicate her life to a more peaceful and tolerant world. She was 11 years old when the 1999 war in Kosovo ended, having suffered the loss of her brother Sami and sister Sadet. “When we returned to our burned out home, I hated all the people for the bad things they had done. However, I quickly realized that hating them wasn’t right. It wasn’t good for our future. I thought to myself; ‘the violence that is destroying us must end, the pain needs to stop!’”
In 2002 Fatmire launched Kosovo’s Kids for Peace movement. Her motivation for launching the Kids for Peace movement was based on her belief that “no other children should have to live what my siblings and I have had to live through”. It was through this important community-based work that Fatmire was eventually named an Angel of Hope by World Vision Canada. Of Fatmire, World Vision has said; “(she) brought hope to others and made a difference in her community”.
Fatmire was eventually selected as a member of the “1000 Peace Women Across the Globe” (www.1000peacewomen.org), through which she was jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
In 2009, the Kids for Peace movement received significant international recognition by being awarded World Vision International’s first ever Peacebuilding Award.
Shortly after launching the Kids for Peace movement, Fatmire was called upon to join the Council for Peace & Tolerance (CPT) in the ethically-divided and violence-prone city of Mitrovica in Northern Kosovo. The CPT is an organization committed to laying aside all ethnic, religious and gender based prejudice as they strive to promote mutual understanding through diverse community-based projects. It is Fatmire’s experience, passion for peacemaking, and love of others which stands as an example to each of us – an example which encourages us to live lives of grace in our own neighbourhoods.
Fatmire’s work has been featured extensively by both local and global media outlets, presenting an opportunity to share her story with a wider audience. Over the years Fatmire has been invited to speak at various international forums including the Global Movement for Children Conference at the Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona, Spain, the “Young Active Citizenship’s EU Meeting” in Helsinki, Finland, the United Nations in Geneva, and the World YWCA’s Young Women’s Leadership Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.
In 2008, Fatmire has also participated in a Wolrd Vision-sponsored peace mission in Kenya.
Today, Fatmire is Eagle Down’s visionary and source of inspiration. As Director of Operations, Fatmire leads advocacy efforts and guides the selection of projects which Eagle Down supports every year.