The beginning of hope
SYLVAN LAKE — Somalia in 20 years will be a peaceful country where anyone can have an education and everyone has enough to eat, says a Central Alberta woman hailed as an agent for change in a war-shattered nation.
Amanda Lindhout, joined by Somali Canadian Abdul Salad of Red Deer, gave an update on Sunday of a scholarship program she launched in Red Deer last March, less than five months after being released from 15 months of being held hostage by a group of teenaged captors.
The Somali Women’s Education Program has now selected 11 girls who will each be given a university education in hope that they will be able to help their country change from within, Lindhout said following her presentation at the Gospel Mission Church during its Sunday service.
Applicants were chosen based on their desire to stay in Somalia and help pull their country back together after 20 years of civil war, said Lindhout.
Salad, one of thousands of young professionals who had escaped at the start of Somalia’s crisis, said he had turned his back on his home to concentrate on making a new life for himself and his family.
Lindhout’s capture only three days after landing in Mogadishu, her suffering at the hands of teenaged kidnappers and her subsequent commitment to bringing Somalia’s women back to their feet encouraged him to reopen those ties and join in.
Only one who has been through what Lindhout suffered could understand the plight of women in Somalia, who suffer “unspeakable abuses,” said Salad.
At the heart of the country’s social turmoil is the collapse of the education system and an extremely narrow interpretation of Islam in a country that had at one time revered its women and welcomed people of all races and religions, he said.
Now, strangers are targets, not to be trusted, and the very narrow interpretation of Islam under which its people operate has relegated women to slave status, said Salad.
Lindhout’s captors were born to war and raised without a formal education.
They have no concept of the world around them and no idea how to function in it, he said. It they had, they likely would not have taken the path of violence that they chose, he said.
That can change as young women enter universities and use their education to rebuild their families and their communities, said Salad.
The scholarship fund Lindhout has organized will be a key factor in rebuilding what some people have termed a failed country, he said.
While there is no central government, there are communities within Somalia that support that change and there are functioning universities within those communities, said Salad.
Lindhout encouraged people who attended her presentation to get involved with the program’s Adopt-A-Student program.
Sending women to university in Somalia is relatively inexpensive, she said. $1,000 will provide books, tuition and living expenses for one year.
Please visit www.globalenrichmentfoundation.com to learn more about the Somali Women’s Scholarship Fund.
By Brenda Kossowan – Red Deer Advocate
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