I worked this summer with the Maria Cristina Foundation (MCF) in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates to secure registration for our charitable mission: to provide excelling children from Bangladesh the opportunity to attend some of the UAE's most reputable private schools. MCF began over six years ago in Dhaka, Bangladesh where Maria Conceicao, a flight attendant based out of Dubai, was moved by the level of poverty she saw in Bangladesh. She began to collect resources and school supplies and distribute them in the slums each time one of her flights landed in Dhaka. The support she received from the Dubai community, eventually allowed her to set up a school and day program, aptly named "The Dhaka Project", that has now grown to provide education for 500 children and their families.
Just over a year ago, the Dhaka Project was in full swing when Maria realized that several of the children had exceeded all of their teacher's and curriculum's expectations. The question she faced was whether the Dhaka Project could afford to encourage the children to keep maximizing their full potential and support their dreams of attending high schools that could lead them to potentially attend world-class Universities. Before it even seemed like a plausible idea, Maria knew the answer would have to be an unequivocal, yes.
Maria's decision to support this new endeavor led to the setting up of the Maria Cristina Foundation in Dubai. The opportunities for Maria's children to come to Dubai and enroll in school were overwhelming. Several Dubai private schools were competing for the children and even offered to pay for their transportation. However, the challenge she faced is that the UAE has a strict policy for registering charities and NGO's. In fact, there are no "local' or grass roots NGO's permitted in the the UAE. Each NGO that wants to set up an office in Dubai must have been registered abroad for at least five years and register under one of five government organizations. Furthermore, the office must be set up in one of the emirates "free zones" and have at least ten branches abroad.
Fortunately for MCF, the Ministry of Higher Education ("Ministry") agreed to sponsor the children's visas and made an edict that MCF could partner under the Red Crescent Society in Dubai. When I arrived, the Ministry had already sponsored seven children's visas, but the main problem for MCF was getting all the paperwork for the Red Crescent Society underway so that MCF could open a bank account, open an office and hold fundraising events.
Because MCF had been "brought" to Dubai under edict by the Ministry, our humble organization did not fulfill many of the requirements that would ordinarily already have been satisfied by an NGO by the time they partnered with the government office. To add to the mix, MCF would be the first autonomous "grass-roots" NGO to ever open in Dubai let alone be sponsored by the Ministry. Thus, our task of coordinating all the essentials for the smooth running of an organization proved to be quite challenging. No formula, or road map existed to guide us to the best solutions to our problems. My days were spent running around the Emirate organizing all the paperwork that Red Crescent needed to open a bank account for MCF, get us approved for an office space outside of a free zone, and secure Red Crescent's partnership so that we could get approval from the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department for fundraising events.
All in all, this pursuit took up the better part of my summer, but eventually we managed to accomplish everything that we needed for the efficient running of an office and and a registered NGO.
The latest pursuit of MCF, is to take recent graduates of the Dhaka Project school in Bangladesh and partner with Emirates Airline to sponsor their training in various fields of company and thereby, find them long-term employment. This new endeavor has proved challenging both for MCF and the Dhaka graduates. First, we had to convince Emirates that this proposal was not a waste of time and that providing free training to our candidates would be in their best interest. Second, the teenagers would have to combat the language barrier and homesickness. Third, MCF has to satisfy the requirements of the Bangladeshi Embassy in the UAE and verify that the children are not being used for underage labor.
Fortunately, we couldn't have chosen our first two candidates better. Robin and Al Amin keep our office lively and fun. Although, they can be a handful at times, and need to be continually reminded to do their homework, everyone in the office enjoys their zeal and exuberance for life. The two 18-year old's have never traveled outside of Bangladesh, been on a plane or seen a shopping mall. Every day they have new questions for why things are he way they are and we have to continually remind them to speak English to each other. At the end of their six-week course with Emirates, they will have to take an exam and pass with 80%. On top of that they will have to pass an interview with the Emirates HR department.
I truly do not envy the pressure that these two young boys must be under. Although they are young, they do understand that their success or failure with Emirates will decide the fate of many other young Dhaka school graduates that might be able to find employment with Emirates in the future. Besides this, however, they know that they will have to return home to Dhaka if they are not employed with Emirates. Unfortunately, returning to Dhaka would mean that their options for upward mobility in employment would be severely limited by social status and economic conditions. The boys dreams of having a families of their own and being able to help their parents small businesses in Dhaka would almost certainly be shattered if they don't pass their final. Robin, in particular, has a girlfriend in Dhaka that he desperately wants to marry someday, and continually reassures me that he has to pass if he ever wants to face her again. Al Amin, similarly comes from a large slum family and says that no girls will talk to him if the does not get a job. Everyday as he heads out from the MCF office to the Emirates program, myself and the other ladies in the office tell him to "lighten up on the cologne" but, honestly, he thinks it's the best thing, ever, and never listens.
Besides the utter joy I've received from partaking in a project that is dedicated to helping children reach their full potential, by far the most important thing I have done in my work with MCF is help establish the beginning of a system where grass roots NGOs may be able to set up in Dubai and establish the first inklings of an organic UAE civil society. My work with MCF has proved that there is a sliver of hope, however narrow, for movers and changers in the Middle East to make a difference in the institutions that at first glance seem like immovable mountains. With hard work and perseverance it is possible, I believe, for this generation of Middle Easterners to expand the horizons for humanistic principle in their societies.
