Documentary : Sexy Girls Have It Easy

I've found an interesting experiment  on Tumblr ,, and i think it worths watching http://vimeo.com/12030156
A woman makes her own social science experiment. First, while very plain looking, she asked for free cake, and free taxi rides. She was rejected on every request but one. Then she got fully made up with heels, make up, and a revealing dress. She basically has everything thrown at her for free.

Reflection on Desert Dawn 2.0/Female Circumcision in the UAE

Background: 

Desert Dawn is basically an annual Educational Magazine published by the Bachelor Media students in Dubai Women's College. The magazine introduces two different issues, one per semester, and they present several articles written by the students themselves professionally. Those articles mostly revolve around social problems and issues, investigations and persuasive articles that involve several opinions in health, education, economy, IT, media and much more.

Desert Down has witnessed a lot of positive impressions and feedback from its readers for many years on the students’ level of quality in writing, editing and producing printed media pieces. Every issue introduced has its unique identity as different students write in every issue, and it gets widely spread so that it reaches the biggest audiences possible in the UAE.

Therefore, since I’m currently studying a social media course as part of my corporate communication studies, one of the required projects was Desert Dawn 2.0 project. It was one of the most interesting experiences I had ever tried on social media. It’s basically a project where students were supposed to choose, discuss, and raise awareness about one story they are passionate about in one of the Desert Dawn issues.  Each student gets to choose a story from the latest 2 issues of our own DD and present it through social media platforms for the purpose of reaching unique community engagement and knowledge.  The project was designed to enrich us with Social Responsibility since we are free to choose a topic that is dear to us and discuss it with our own community to make a difference.

Thus, as soon as I got the project brief I decided to look through all the previous DD issues and choose the most favorable article of stories to me. I was confused at that point since there were too many interesting stories, but at final I made my decision, which was the story, written by the students: Wafa Al Marzoqi “Female circumcision in the UAE”. Female circumcision is considered a sensitive topic in the UAE society as people still argue about whether it is recommended Islamic ally or simply practiced because of tribal traditions. A significant number of the UAE Nationals follow the footsteps of their parents and grandparents without questioning the practice of female circumcision.

Thus, this online social media project presented the previous addressed issue to the community of social media to discuses the seriousness of its consequences through strategic plans designed carefully.

All the girls were shocked why did I choose this particular article among all the other stories. They anticipated that such topic would make our conservative public angry as its one of the extremely sensitive topics. However, I had my different point of view, as this topic has always gained my attention for its boldness. I wanted to overcome the challenge and the fear of what my classmates were expecting me to face. So, I took a further step and I started the project by creating a discussion group on Face book to introduce the article to the online community. Yes, I have to admit it and say that at first I had some feelings of fear, hesitation and uncertainty do I really want that topic or I should look for something else! But eventually I got highly motivated by my teacher to move on and never lose that chance. I got more confident; I started finalizing the outline of the project, designing a timeline and a strategy to follow.

 So the group discussion components on face book revolved around activating the group by inviting the biggest number of targeted audiences possible on face book at the shortest time possible by the following components:

 1-Providing the audience with an online copy of DD, and the presented article of females’ circumcision in the UAE.

2-Sharing statements made at DD female circumcision article.

3-Integrating the public opinions in the presented material in the group through sharing real stories and personal experiences, or even insights.

4-Introducing sticky messages like scientific facts, statistics, and studies conducted and prove.

5-Sharing Multi media pieces to support the group goals like videos, photos and posters.

But the matter might be questioned here is why did I choose Face book yet not twitter or any other platform? Well, after deep thinking I insisted on using Face book for several reasons:

1.Its the number one most famous social media platform in the UAE .

2.It’s used by a significant number of UAE females more than any other available platform.

3.The variety of the technical functionality options that Face-book offers matches well the strategy wanted to be applied for supporting the group page, such as the ability of posting links, videos, photos and documents directly to the group page.

4.The ease of driving traffic to the Face-book groups through individuals’ personal account and their friends.

In almost two weeks, the group received a significant amount of participation and engagement from the public. People on Face book were really interested to discuses the seriousness and importance of such topic. Some people got highly motivated to talk, while others felt shy to join such bold debate. The group now has more than 280 members. 27 comments from different active members were posted, and it received 41”like” click button on the posted videos, comments and sticky messages.

 And just like any other duties, this project had its difficulties and challenges. Firstly, the task of driving traffic to the group page was one of the main obstacles as the project timeline was 3 weeks only. But I’ve tried to overcome that through inviting people from UAE’s top most influential corporate brands, individuals and events on social media who have a big number of members. In fact, deciding upon the right words to use on social media to avoid double meanings or misunderstanding was also one of the challenges. I had had to reconsider every single word before I post anything. Some people also were discouraged to talk in public about this, especially those who live in a conservative society. So I had to think about how I can break those boundaries and let them share their thoughts and insights.

Overall, I think this project was something valuable to me. I think my topic was definitely worth trying and taking such risk to discuses it on social media .I cherish my Emirati identity to the point where I would accept to do anything just to make a difference even if it counts little.

Feel free to join my discussion group on Face-book, your participation would definitely mean a lot to the society =)

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_114099572005138&ap=1

"Youths and Knives, Extraneous Phenomenon and a Possible Crime"

 As usual, I was checking my daily emails on that day at early morning, and on a coincidence, one email caught my attention. It was a received email in my inbox from the Community Development Authority, inviting DWC students to attend an open panel discussion under the title "Youths and knives, Extraneous Phenomenon and a Possible Crime" in the InterContinental hotel in Dubai. All in a sudden, I felt super lucky to be given such a chance as me and my classmate Rawdha were working during the same time on a CSR awareness campaign in social media platforms under the same title “ minors and weapons”. Thus, we both agreed on taking advantage of this great coincidence, and decided to attend the event in order to have a bigger picture and knowledge of our in process campaign.

Therefore, On 19 April 2011 at 11 morning the panel discussion was kicked off, and were very excited to start. More than 100 participants were seated there, and they all were experts, professionals, and doctors in the field of the addressed issue of knifes and youths. The panel discussion was moderated by HE Dhaen Shaheen, Executive Director, and editor of AlBayan newspaper. The panelists were Khalid AlKamda General Manager of Community Development Authority, HE Ahmed Butti Dubai Customs Director General / CEO of Dubai Ports, Customs and Free Zone, the General Khalil Ibrahim Mohammed Al Mansouri, Director General Administration of Inquiries and Criminal Investigation Department at Dubai Police, HE Fatma Al Marri, CEO of Dubai Education Organization in the knowledge and human development Authority in Dubai plus Dr.Sheikh Ahmed Kubaisi.The event hall was full with a big number of wide range social specialist, psychologists and representatives of federal agencies and local communities from various ministries and government departments such as the Interior Ministry and the Executive Council of Dubai and AD Police, as well as a number of role officials and directors from the Ministry of education, Ministry of Social Affairs, Community Development Authority and representatives of media .

The panel discussion highlighted the significant and major elements of the social problem by rising meaningful and constructive conversations between the seated guests and participants to accomplish one main target, which is to cooperate with government and agencies within the UAE to agree on a common strategy and an effective program of actions to address the phenomenon of the usage of bladed weapons by Emirate youth and adolescents in fights.

Hence, to achieve that aim the panelists and the participants discussed the key factors and the root causes that enforce minors to be overly aggressive to the point of lending knives and other sharp metals to revenges or attack brutality in street melees, which something we as citizens have never seen before in the UAE. It just started to breach our society’s boundaries from 2006, and within only 6 years it shifted our well-known peaceful alleys to risky wrestling circuit with bladed weapons. Tens of dead bodies, hundreds of serious injures and wailing families and much more statistics were mentioned at the panel discussion proved the seriousness and disastrousness of the current spreading extraneous habit. 

 Experts started to analyze the reasons behind that, and they all concluded with an endless list of factors that vary from the surrounded environment effects, the living atmosphere conditions, family collapses, psychological illnesses, friends affects, absenteeism of the educational role in schools and the addiction on violence video games and movies.

However, I personally believe deep in heart that there is only major reason beyond Emirati youth and usage of knives; it is acting with immoral behaviors and the lack of the rooted ethical principles within their conscience. If an individual does not believe in respect to humanity, have no sense of responsibility and lack of self-awareness; it will surely lead to criminalizing. Some people claim that the Immaturity of the young criminal is the reason behind that, well I reply and say that this not an excuse anymore. People should understand that if it’s about Immaturity of youths and the uncontrollable anger they face, it just means one thing which is we will all be excused to hold knives when we feel angry in the future! Everyone will start blaming their anger, their Immaturity and other illogical justifications when they kill an innocent victim. Thus we need to recognize that the real reason exists within our souls, and the solution should be implanted in our children’s mind long time ago, but not when it’s too late. Punishment and penalty’s sentences will never heal the problem when people's lives are gone. We are the only ones, who have the key solution to erase that extraneous phenomenon in our society, but not police and courts nor prisons.

Deep thank and appreciation goes to Community of Development and all the participants of the event for taking such initiatives toward the society of the UAE. One thing I should point out here is that panel discussion opened my eye on one thing, which is the existence of such conscientious and trustworthy minds in our community that feels guilty if they didn’t cooperate in social protection and cohesion. We are truly gifted to have them.

12 April 2011- A Remarkable Day in My Entire Life

12th of April, is one of the most remarkable dates I will always carry on in my memories. Lots of exciting and great events occurred on that day, and I would never forget how awesome today was. Let me first start off with the most important and valuable news. It was about the Debate Day that takes place every year in Dubai women’s College. All year 2 business students plus us- (corporate communication students for the first time)- have to challenge a randomly chosen team from Dubai Men’s College students to rebut an ethical case study from our ethical studies course.  You don’t know who is your opposition till the debate day, and you have to be prepared for that. But the good news was about me and my other three members wining the first place on the Debate Day in Dubai Women’s College. Yes!  We were the first and the best debating team in Dubai women’s College in 2011.It was one of the moments that marked my life for how valuable it sounded to us. My team members and me worked so hard to get this done. We’ve practiced like ten times with our teachers, we just couldn’t be more happy in today’s debate ending ceremony. I truly realized deep in my heart lots of precious lessons at those couple of hours. One thing was knowing that as much as you determine and desire to accomplish your goal, you’ll be rewarded back with what you deserve. Show self-motivation; believe in your gifted skills, work hard and you will definitely rock it.

Secondly was discovering how our teachers really care about us. Before the actual event, we were very scared, lost, feared of losing and even talking to unfamiliar boys to fight for our debate side. It was our first time in life to do such a thing, to opposite DMC boys and rebut them. However, our teachers, Ms Pamela and Dr.Ghoussob devoted their attention and busy work hours to prepare us well, grant their support and encouragement whenever we needed, and changed the negative feeling in our minds. My deep gratefulness and appreciation go to everyone who had an impact on my performance in today’s debate. I owe a lot of thanks to my teachers, my team members and my classmates. You made my day! I dedicate this achievement to my teachers and my classmates.

Thirdly, it is a slightly disappointing observation I found today during the debate hours. I’ve found out something made me really feel sorry for how Emirati boys are. I’m not generalizing in the forward point, yet I’m focusing on a minor number of the boys from what I’ve witnessed. Some of the boys who participated in other debating team with the girls were weirdly funny! No offense to any one, but how can mature boys in the age of 20 or 19 disregard or Underestimate the capabilities of young females! The majority of the boys were laughing the whole time on the girls’ talks, not taking it seriously as much as the girls did, and not even showing the desire to debate. They weren’t prepared to fight strongly for their argument points, they just wanted to come show off infront of the girls and leave. I don’t know if am the only one who felt that way, but my classmates agreed on this. We were really frustrated to know that there are such Emirati boys in our society who still undervalue the skills of females, and don’t believe in our professionalism in jobs. I don’t deny, yes there were great male audiences and participants who left positive impression through their debates, but I really don’t know what was wrong with the rest! I’m sure that the only answer to the previous question is the stereotype that spread in our society specifically among Emirati boys that revolve around girls’ limited skills and capabilities.

I wish Emirati boys change their perception about females skills in life, because it is the time for making changes in our society. I can’t believe or think even that one day we will be marrying to one of those boys! I will really feel shame toward my children if they saw such unserious behavior from their father. We have to stop it, raise awareness, and produce effective generation of Emirati boys; otherwise we will be blaming ourselves for denying and overlooking such hurting reality in the soon future.

DWC Library week- Reading makes changes

On Sunday, 10 April 2011, as part of the recent kicked off event “The DWC Library week ”, I have to say that I attended one of the ultimate motivational lectures in my life, it was given by an inspirational guest speaker, Mr.Mohamed Al Hammadi. He is the Editor in Chief of National Geographic Al Arabia, the Arabic version of National Geographic magazine, which was launched in October 2010. Students from several departments attended the lecture, and they all were eager to meet the lecturer for they heard lots of great news about his writings and thoughts.

Mr. Al Hammadi inaugurated the “Library week” event and activates through his Arabic speech that was titled under “The importance of reading” .He wanted to raise awareness among students about the serious impact of the lack of reading in our Arabic societies and enrich the students’ minds through promoting libraries and books as a social concepts.

He introduced the National Geographic magazine in Al Arabiya to the audiences, and highlighted the main features that differ his magazine from other existing magazines from the numerous topics it profiles, to the well-known article writers and beneficial discussions. Even though the magazine is considered slightly new to the market, 25 thousands copy from its seventh addition has been sold in response to the high demands. And the reason is that the content of the magazine does not exist in any other Arabic magazines. He really encouraged us to pick a copy and spend time with it not to market his job, but to enrich our mental capabilities for our own sakes.

But the one most surprising point he mentioned was the average of Arabs who read comparing to the western regions. Imagine that An American individual reads 11 books in a year; on the other hand an Arabic person reads only 6 pages in one year!! It means he spend only 7 minutes from his 365 days of the year in reading! It’s seriously insane. It is even incomparable, its shame and lame! How can we the nation called by Prophet Mohammed "امة اقرآ التي لا تقرأ " “Readers Nation” does not read as much as those who doesn’t not believe in Islam and Prophet Mohammed piece be upon him!!

It was a big shock to all of us, but personally I knew deep in heart that it is 110% true since me honestly to start off don’t read!

We all fling baseless accusation to our societies, our schools and parents for not implanting the passion of reading since our childhood. We keep blaming them and disregarding our own essential role in building our knowledge from reading. We have to stop giving excuses and make a change in our Arabic societies by reading. Because reading does not only expand your own knowledge, yet it also opens our eyes on the past, present, and the future. If societies don’t read about history, education, science, heath, earth and everything exist within societies, how can they develop and enrich themselves. Societies with no knowledge will eventually corrupt and collapse if no serious action has been taken toward rising reading awareness among the new generations.

A big example Mr.Mohammed mentioned was one of the topics he discussed in his article, which talked about the current shame conditions that Arab countries fight for. The first Malaysian president who was known for wise and mental intelligence from reading ruled the country for 22 years, had remarked the country and shifted Malaysia from a poor uneducated country to one of the rich cultured and developed countries. On contrary, Yemeni people are protesting against their president, and asking for his resignation for he flipped the country’s culture and condition toward the worse. Mr.Mohammed pointed out that the reason behind it goes back to countries level of reading and cultural developments. If the society including presidents and citizens were rich in culture and knowledge, they would certainly be one of the leading communities in the world.

Thus, reading does not only help in communities, but it also enhance our personal confidence and knowledge in our life as when we read we expand our mental intelligent in things we might not heard or even thought about. In addition, reading develops our negotiating and dialoging skills in life as when we read we understand topics better, and learn how people uses words to convince, debate and make statements.

At the last moment of the lecture, I had no doubt in my mind that Mr.Mohammed made me change my perception of reading and readers. I’ve always thought that reading is something boredom and does not appeal to me among all those other temptations in the current life. Hanging out with friends, chatting on phone and addicting on useless technologies and games are things that have to be put a side, especially at this unstable period of revolutions in the Arab nations. We need to co-operate and work together to get educated and enhance our cultures if we want to lead back our Arabic countries that have been always known at the past for their greatest achievements to their previous statues.

Insight Dubai Lecture-Women Leading Change Presentation

March 31, 2011 was the last day of the international conference " Insight Dubai", and i've heard a lot of good stuff about the upcoming session and the guest speakers who will be lecturing. Thus, i choose the last session of the conference to attend, and to be my topic for the press release project to write.Hence, below is my first try to write a press release in English, and i wanted to share it with everyone to get feedback, as well as blog about the event for whom missed it.

------------------------------------------------------

For Immediate Release, March 31-2011

For comment, contact Awatif Ghaith-H00152493@Hct.ac.ae\050-1840150

Unconventional Leading Women:

Insight Dubai 2011 Hosts Women Pioneers Guest Speakers

March 31, 2011, Dubai, UAE -‘Insight Dubai’ the International conference initiated by Dubai Women’s college welcomed four successful international women pioneers’ as guest speakers on Thursday, March 27th in the colleges’ hall as part of the conference beneficial learning activites.Those four guest speakers who were introduced to the students were Marsha S Ivins
 former NASA astronaut, Buthaina Kazim
Strategy and Business Development Manager in Dubai Media Incorporated, Dr. Buthaina Al-Shunnar
an American Board certified Plastic Surgeon and lastly Mashail Al Naqbi the first Emirati female Pilot in the UAE Air Force.

The four-guest lecturer shared with the conference participant their career journey story toward success in a brief presentation, and highlighted the main challenges they face in their careers for being female workers. In addition, the four guest speakers highly motivated the young female participants in their inspirational speeches to break the conventional in their societies, follow their ambitious and redefine the role of females in communities despites of the difficulties and challenges they might face. 

Marsha S Ivins-
former NASA astronaut, who gave several lectures in many universities and colleges for being one of the only few females who stepped on the moon shared with the students her space experience, and talked about how living elements was difficult without gravity in the galaxy through exclusive pictures presented. Students were overwhelmed and astonished with the space pictures and stories shared, and got fully engaged and interested to hear more from Marsha.

Buthaina Kazim

Buthaina Kazim, the second lecturer shared with the students her experience in several social activities and charities she took part in such as building an orphanage in Nepal with the Dubai-based charity, Gulf for Good and her participation in Annapurna Circuit journey. Furthermore, she introduced her independent documentary film Letters to Palestine, which was screened in several film festivals. Ms.Buthaina, one of the local influencing female personalities on Twitter, emphasized also on the vital role of social media in societies’ developments, and encouraged the female students to embrace their identity and manifest their role in communities on social media platforms. 

Dr.Buthaina Al Shunnara 

 Dr. Buthaina Al-Shunnar
a well-known plastic surgeon talked about her full life dedication for her ambitious job, and shared with the students the challenges she faced with male patients who didn’t accept her for being a female doctor.” Having the passion for your dreams, strong determination, and hard working are the fundamental three things a female needs to accomplish her aims” stated Dr. Buthaina.

Mashail Al Naqbi the first Emirati female Pilot in the UAE Air Force, and one of the only five female pilots in the Middle East was the third guest speaker. From Mashail’s experience and career journey she talked to the students about the importance of believing in the female abilities and capabilities, yet not to forget parents’ support and prays in any step taken further toward success.

The lecture was concluded with the students raised questions and comments for being significantly inspired by the four personalities they met, and thankful words from the international as well as local students to the guest speakers for their valuable advice and guidance.

Attendees of the lecture are part of the 7th annual Insight Dubai conference, which is an international leadership conference inaugurated by Dubai Women’s’ College on March 27, 2011. The conference brings more than 150 Emirati and international students representing 6o countries to discuss and exchange knowledge on women’s issues such as women empowerment through several learning activates and trips in 5 days.

Child Custody lecture- Insight Dubai Confrence

On the 28 of March 2011 from 9am to 10:30am,I attended one of the international conference “Insight Dubai” lectures, which took place at the college’s Multi Purpose Hall. It was hosted by the conference participants, and the guest speaker was Ammar Shams, Regional Head of Corporate Sustainability HSBC who discussed the topic of “Child Custody in the UAE law and the Islamic Shari’a “. Mr.Ammar mainly talked about the different transition points of the traditional Islamic law and Share’a throughout the past 1400 years in the issue of child custody.

In addition , he introduced the international participants who had no previous certain knowledge about the discussed topic to the Islamic Shari’a, and how it does contribute to the community needs in several law issues such as child custody in the divorce or death circumstances of the parents.

Mr.Ammar also talked about the five Islamic interpretations, and what are they meant to the Islamic Shari’a which are AlShaf’i,AlHanafi, AlHanbly,AlMaliki and the AlJafari and what the UAE law follows which are the only first four mentioned names.

Then he started to talk about how none Muslims under Islam had believed in certain false stereotypes of the Islamic religion, such as Islam is the religion of terrorist, the strict Islam Shari’a laws like cutting hands and wearing naqab and other spread claims and judgments that has no link to the reality of Islamic Shari’a. Islam is the only merciful, wise and peaceful religion that considers the custody of child rights as one of the vital and major issues in any community that people should be fully aware of.

But the most attention-grabbing part of the lecture was when he started to talk about the deep details of the traditional Islam Shari’a in child Custody rules and how the UAE law adapted and changed some of those laws to harmonize the current social structure of communities and fulfill their needs.

He mentioned that people around the world tended to approach child custody in what is the interest of the child, and whom he wants to be with. However, the Islam traditional assumption was women are the first and default custodian who maintain the child custody when the child is young till a certain age, and if the mother is not qualified for the custody for being incapable financially, mentally or physically the custody goes to the line of females in the child family like sisters, aunties or grandmothers but the father comes at the end of the line. Hence it just means that the father would eventually not get his child custody when the child needs one of his available and capable parents more than anytime else. Thus, since Islam was rotted in a very clear system that tells it has the capacity to be adapted and changed to make the law protect children from individuals’ interests, the UAE law modernized child custody law to qualify the father straightaway and not the female line of the family when there is a stated evident against the mother qualification. And that’s have been done not to raise conflicts or contrary in the Islam religion, yet as children in current life needs their parents more than before in the traditional Islam era.

Mr.Ammar also cleared out the fine line between the three terms custody, moral guardianship and legal guardianship and explained the differences between them.

 It was one of the very beneficial lectures I’ve ever attended, because I gained a lot of new knowledge about my own religion and things I’ve never knew before as a Muslim. But what really made me feel surprised was when the none-Muslims and none-Arabs participants of the conference felt so curious and raised questions we as Muslims might never think about. It just made me feel pride and respect the laws of my religion and country even if they sound debatable or argumentative to me because there is always a clear and wise answer for every questioned issue.