Dara McLeod’s passport is full of stamps. But she’s not cycling through Tuscany or visiting wineries in Chile—her passport stamps are from trips to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, El Salvador, Nigeria and a half-dozen other countries.
In her years working in humanitarian aid organizations—and currently as executive director of War Child Canada—Dara says she sees both the best and worst of humanity. “I traveled to those places, when for the most part, they were in fairly acute phases of conflict. So you see the extremes of human nature, both the extreme brutality and the extraordinary resilience.”
War Child Canada rehabilitated a war-damaged school for these students in Yemen
Photo credit: War Child Canada
Her experiences include scenes that very few North Americans will ever witness in person—reading graffiti scrawled in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces by American soldiers, for instance, or walking through the medieval bird market in Kabul, Afghanistan. For Dara, however, it’s people who generate her most powerful memories. “It’s very hard to meet and talk to individuals who are, without question, going through the worst thing they will ever endure in their entire life. And that is really humbling: that they share their stories. It also offers a perspective on the scale of the challenges some people face, challenges that we in Canada are lucky enough not to have to, because of an accident of birth and geography and nothing more than that.”
A Family of Community Activists
Dara’s own geography began in Thunder Bay, as one of four daughters of Lyn McLeod (former Ontario Liberal Party leader, long-serving MPP, and former chancellor of Lakehead University) and Neil McLeod (former family physician, past member of Lakehead’s board of governors, and a founding member of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine). “I grew up in a household with parents who were extremely active in the community,” she says. “Both mom and dad showed us by their example that each of us needed to give back and make sure that we left our community better than we found it.”
Dara and her mother Lyn McLeod enjoy a sunny afternoon at Thunder Bay’s Marina Park.
With aspirations of becoming an actor, Dara headed to the University of Alberta to study theatre and history. After graduation she returned to Thunder Bay to get her education degree at Lakehead. “I recognized that I needed some stability,” she says. “I didn’t want to be the actor-slash-waiter. I thought that doing a one-year teaching degree would give me something more substantial to fall back on.” She recalls the education program as having a great balance of vocational training along with practicums. “I had good experiences as a student teacher in Thunder Bay elementary schools and was very well supported by the professors.” Dara adds that the psychology of teaching was especially interesting and was something she drew on when she started teaching full time.
After several years teaching (and auditioning) in Toronto, Dara realized that neither education nor acting were the right path for her. Storytelling had drawn her to theatre in the first place, and it was this creative outlet she missed the most. “I thought that journalism would be a good opportunity for me to tell stories of deeper meaning that were more closely aligned with my interests around social justice and politics.”
From Canada to Sub-Saharan Africa
Dara went on to earn a master’s degree in international journalism and broadcast journalism at City, University of London in England, and then worked at the Associated Press and the BBC World Service with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Her journalism career also included a six-year stint as a producer for CBC’s As It Happens from 2005 to 2011, again covering Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. “As a producer, it was my responsibility to come up with three or four stories each morning that we would try to get on air later that day. It’s a very quick turnaround on a show like that, which requires great nimbleness and creativity in searching out storytellers, but that’s what really developed my understanding of these parts of the world.”
One story that was especially memorable for Dara was her CBC coverage of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), operating out of northern Uganda. “They were a very, very brutal rebel group that was notorious for abducting children to use as child soldiers. I managed to get the first ever North American interview with the LRA’s leader, Lieutenant Vincent Otti—I had to track him down in the middle of the jungle. Those stories are the ones that stood out the most because I felt like I was shining a light on areas of the world that perhaps don’t get as much mainstream media coverage as they should,” she says.
Students taking part in a War Child Canada catch-up learning program in Uganda.
Photo credit: War Child Canada
Dara’s next career step was to make the move to humanitarian organizations, becoming the media relations manager and then director of communications with the US-based Refugees International. “I wanted to be more active in helping the people whose stories I was telling,” she says of that pivot. It was in that role that her passport started to fill up with visa stamps.
Five years ago, Dara accepted the executive director position at War Child Canada. Founded by Dr. Samantha Nutt, War Child Canada is a charitable organization that strives to foster the capacity of people in war-torn countries to find long-term solutions to the many problems caused by violent conflict.
Young students in a War Child Canada-run classroom in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Photo credit: War Child Canada
Establishing War Child was a response to “an over-colonization of aid, and this practice of having a bunch of Western expats coming into these countries and trying to impose what they saw as best for the country, but not necessarily engaging with the local communities,” Dara says. “We are focused on creating capacity, while recognizing existing capacity already there in local communities. As a result, 99.99% of War Child staff are from the communities in the countries that they serve.”
War Child Disrupts the Cycle of Violence
The three main areas that War Child focuses on are education, in particular education for kids who have been out of school for months, or years, because of conflict in their home region; meaningful employment and sustainable income for their parents or guardians; and what Dara calls “access to justice”—working with communities to help protect women and children from abuse, gender-based violence, and intimate partner violence. War Child initiatives vary according to the needs of communities and countries. In Afghanistan they help run female-focused health centres with female staff, for example, while in Uganda they introduced secondary school education programs that are compressed into two years for young people who have fled violence in neighbouring South Sudan and are often raising their brothers and sisters after the loss of their parents.
Dara says that it’s her time in the field that inspires her the most. She points to a young man she met named Isaac, who wants to become a chemist. “He said to me, ‘You know, now that I’ve come to Uganda, I see that I have a future for myself. I call my friends who are still in South Sudan and still in the bush (a euphemism for engagement with rebel fighters or active involvement in the conflict) and I tell them to put down the gun and to come to Uganda, because in Uganda you have hope.’ You hear a story like that, and it can’t help but inspire you and motivate you to continue to find solutions, to continue to find opportunities, so that young people and their families do have futures.”
Alfred Okech, War Child’s country director for Uganda, says that Dara’s direct experience in countries in conflict, combined with her empathy, is invaluable. “She understands the struggles and the dilemmas. She takes the time to let you understand why certain decisions should be made and where we can focus on the greater good. And she’s a very down-to-earth person. With her, you’re not afraid to voice your opinions.”
Dr. Samantha Nutt, Founder and President of War Child Canada and War Child USA, echoes those observations. “Dara is deeply empathetic, while always remaining strategic around what’s possible, what’s feasible, and what are the best pathways to get the job done. She’s also great at dealing with people, whether it is our local field team, partners, funders, funding agencies, UN agencies, heads of other organizations—she is adept at the forward-facing stuff and handling negotiations. She is a very skilled thinker and communicator with profound knowledge of this sphere. And that is a winning combination when it comes to the kind of work that we do—work that is very hard. At times, it can be scary, utterly exhausting, frustrating, and even soul destroying because there are so many things that you want to be able to do, but you have finite resources. Dara navigates all of that with humanity and humility, in a way that I will say is exceptionally rare. To me that’s what makes her utterly extraordinary.”
A South-Sudanese woman takes part in one of War Child Canada’s job training programs
Photo credit: War Child Canada
One of the hallmarks of an extraordinary person, of course, is that they rarely perceive themselves as being extraordinary. Instead, Dara is clear-eyed about her job and especially her time in the field. “You’re meeting with people who don’t have the luxury and the certainty of being able to go home at the end of the week or the end of the visit. That is something I didn’t fully appreciate until I started working in these conflict areas and that’s when I realized just how incredibly meaningful it is to know that you have a home to return to.”
One of her more recent trips, though, didn’t involve a passport at all: travelling from her home in Toronto to Northwestern Ontario for her annual summer visit to her family’s camp at Shebandowan Lake. She also spent a lot of time in Thunder Bay. “We always go to the McKellar Confectionery or the Coney Island restaurant for burgers and dogs. We visit the waterfront, the Sleeping Giant, and the amethyst mines—all the classics! I’ve got eight nieces and nephews and it’s really fun being able to share those places that made the Lakehead area so special growing up.”