A Step towards Our Future
By Eman Adel My Name is Eman, I am a 21 year-old Egyptian girl from a village called Assadiya, in Abu Hammad, Sharqiya, one of Egypt’s biggest agricultural governorates in the Nile Delta. I want to share my story with you as I am currently living the happiest times in my life! Simply because I have just learned what "responsibility" means and I now have friends all over Egypt. We have a common goal that is we care for each other and help each other. Yes, there is competition among us, but it is all about developing our village and our country. I am a volunteer in the “Step towards Our Future” Program which is one of the activities of the “Youth Association for Population and Development YAPD”, a non government organization supported by UNICEF-Egypt The year 2007 marks the beginning of this fantastic phase in my life! We traveled to Cairo with YAPD to attend a Youth Empowerment workshop. We learned how to make field studies in order to understand the problems of our small community. My field study took me to houses of rich and poor people. In my village I was touched and overwhelmed with what I have found out. I saw how the poor have compassion for each other. I interviewed a mother who told me how she used to visit an old lady to help her with house chores. The women said she used to cover her face because she did not want anyone on the street to recognize her as she was not doing it to show off. You can definitely learn a lot when you get closer to your community and feel for your people! And now it was time for action. The volunteers came together and we began to think of ideas for our initiative with our friend the Project Coordinator in Sharqiya Mr. Hosam Abdel Nabi. We chose to start with an initiative that we called “Ayssin” which means moonlight. We viewed our problems as darkness, and we wanted to get light out of this darkness around us. We decided to start by marking our place so we put big placards at the village entrance, posted 99 plates with God's attributes written on them all along the road to the village and built a fence on the outer parameter of the Youth Center.
Burning the rice husk was of major concern to us. We spoke to farmers on the dangers and hazards of burning rice husk to health and environment. We agreed with the Local authority in Assadiya to make trucks available to carry the husk from the farmers' land to have it re-compressed after making manual compressors available. For me, the most important reward after taking part in all these activities is that one feels that his work has made a difference. Now that they have seen Abol Naga among us, our image improved in their eyes. They are more encouraging than before and our number as volunteers has greatly increased. Even some people we had never expected to take part with us are now waiting for a chance to participate in voluntary activities. The UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors’ visit was definitely a big moral boost. People are seeing for themselves how our efforts are respected and held in high esteem. I wish our ideas will reach all people in order to get them to help us as volunteers in every governorate. I wish a weekly or a monthly TV program will present our lectures, workshops and every step we take in “Step towards our Future” Program. In this manner parents will know what their sons and daughters are doing. They will then encourage them and will contribute to solving our community problems. My volunteer work has made me believe that happiness can make success stories. That is why I am sure that with you and for you my dreams will come true!
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