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Hope-fne - My Blog
Hope-fne - My Blog


Orphanage Visit
Related to country: Saudi Arabia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

This year I sent out an invitation to my network of 220 people in Saudi Arabia to help me collect educational gifts for an orphanage. I expected a good turn out of helping hands, and happy orphans and a wonderful time. What I got was quite a different story.
I had visited the women’s welfare office located on the first floor of the orphanage in South Jeddah, but this is the first time I really thought about doing something for the orphans of this facility. And while I had done work for the welfare center a few times I never stopped in to see the orphans.
Each year people always tell me how well taken care of the orphans are during Ramadan, and how nice the orphanages are in Jeddah, but for some reason this year I just wanted to help this particular orphanage. When I inquired with the administration office if anyone was bringing gifts to the orphans for Ramadan I was a little surprised to hear them say “No.” At the same time I was delighted to know that I could really help organize something special for them.
As I said in the beginning I contacted everyone in my network in hopes to really give them a terrific Ramadan. Now can you imagine how many people responded? Well, I will tell you only three of my contacts that are Saudi Citizens responded and gave a helping hand. However, numerous of my Saudi contacts were curious to know if the orphans were of Saudi nationality or not. (Got to RANT “Are you joking!!? To me an orphan is an orphan and it is Hadith to take care of all the orphans. Growing up in America I always took for granted that when you are born in a country you automatically take the nationality of that country, but living here I got the biggest shock of my life on how that whole system works. But really people…you know that when you look at the majority of orphans in Saudi Arabia they have the Asian/Arab features or they have the African/Arab features and everyone in Saudi Arabia knows what’s going on here. Weather the orphan is born Hala or Haram it is our responsibility to take care of them. It is especially important for Saudis to take care of their Haram orphans as it is the fault of the social system that these children our brought into the world. I mean really how can we keep strange women prancing around in our houses for our sons and husband to see openly, while keeping them from seeing or communicating with any other women and not expect the shatan to be there. There is great wisdom behind the Koran in telling women to be hajab and being hajab or screened allows us to interact with men in society in a way that keeps us both modest and reminds us of our duties to one another. The culture has distorted it so much to deprive the men of this intellectual stimulation and created an unhealthy infatuation with women as an object, thereby bring into this world an unprecedented number of haram children. So don’t tell me we are not responsible for taking care of these no-named, no-nationality, lost and innocent souls!”) Besides the two Saudis who didn’t ask about nationality and did help, I only had 8 other individuals that came forward to help do something for the orphans.
Thanks to Allah these are very wonderful people and although we were few in number we were able to make some magnificent packages to give the orphans for Ramadan. As a matter of fact we did such a good job that we had a few extra packages that we wanted to give to another orphanage. SO I contacted a friend who usually coordinated gifts for orphans. Much to my surprise she said she stopped the program because the orphans in the orphanage she was giving to had too much gifts from other groups during Ramadan. I asked her where these orphanages are and she informed me of one very famous orphanage in the South and one in the North. Well, of course these orphanages are taken care of they are owned by very wealthy families with a large network of wealthy friends. So we just decided to give our extra gifts to the employees of the orphanage.
When I arrived at the orphanage I had many expectations as my head was full of images that people had told me about a few orphanages in Jeddah. I expected it to be clean and well furnished and with the normal extravagant décor that you find in every Saudi home. Sadly I did not find that. All of the sudden the bags of gifts I had brought seemed less important, less exciting. I was shocked at the site. I had recently seen a special on prisons in Yemen and here I felt like I was standing in one. I had brought my daughter of five years with me to help pass out the gifts to the girls, and now she was clinging to my dress with fright. I looked at her and her big Arab eyes looked up at me filled with tears, “I want to go home,” she whined in a soft voice.
The experience was nothing like I expected. I don’t know how this orphanage could be so horrible. How must the girls living here feel. They are well educated, fed, and dressed, but their living conditions are horrific. How can you send an orphan out to one of the most elite private schools and Universities in Jeddah and then have her come home to a box that resembles a prison.
I spoke about this with one of my elite Saudi friends and she said,” You shouldn’t have even wasted your time there. If the living conditions are so bad then the administration doesn’t care about the orphanage, and there is no hope for them.”
You know she may have a point, but there’s no way your going to tell me there is no hope to improve the living conditions of these orphans. You bet I’m marching in the administration office and finding out what the problem is here. You bet I’m going straight to the owner to complain. And you better believe that I am planning to go in there with a bucket of paint, some snap in floors and some volunteers and we are going to make a difference, we are going to care!

October 8, 2008 | 4:27 PM Comments  1 comments

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Orphans in Ramadan
Related to country: Saudi Arabia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

This Ramadan bring joy and excitment to orphans by providing them with gifts that they would not normally revcieve. All gifts must be new, safe, and of high quality, for it is better for us all to treat the orphans with respect and as if they are our own flesh and blood.

Gifts will be deliverd on the first day of Shawall, so they must be dropped off at the meeting site by the 26 of Ramadan.

The orphanage currently being campaigned for is in South Jeddah and we are looking for one in Ryiad.

44 Children are in need of gifts for the Jeddah campaign. Boys aged 6 to 18 and Girls aged 11 to 20.

September 10, 2008 | 8:00 PM Comments  0 comments

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