Comprehension 8 : a boy and UNICEF

(1) My name is Ayman, I am a 21-year-old Egyptian student from a village called Assadiya, in Egypt, 1 want to share my story with you as I am currently living the happiest times in my life! This simply because i have just learned what “responsibility” means and I have made friends all over Egypt. I am a volunteer in the “Step Towards Our Future” programme which is one of the activities of the Youth Association for Population and Development (YAPD), a non-governmental organisation supported by UNICEF, Egypt.

(2) The year 2007 marks the beginning of this fantastic phase in my life! We travelled to Cairo with YAPD to attend a youth empowerment workshop. We learned 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. You can definitely learn a lot when you get closer to your community. And feel for your people !

(3) 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. We decided to start by marking our place, so we put large notices at the village entrance and built a fence around the Youth Center. We also established a social club inside the Youth Center and turned a deserted area there into a garden and called it Ayssin Garden for Children. We also arranged big medical convoy including 19 mobile clinics and a drug store. The convoy provides medica1 specialities not available in our community for skin, eye, heart and chest diseases.

(4) For me, the most important reward after taking part in all these activities is that one feels that his work has made a difference. I hope our ideas will reach all people in order to encourage them to volunteer for the benefit of their community. I hope a weekly or a monthly TV programme will present our lectures, workshops and every step we take in “Step Towards Our Future" programme. In this manner, parents will know what their sons and daughters are doing and they will then encourage them to contribute to solving our community problems. A UNICEF representative visited us to see the outcome of our efforts. Consequently, people are seeing for themselves how our efforts are respected and held in high esteem.