A few days ago, Erik and I had the amazing opportunity to interview Esra’a Al Shafei, founder of Mideast Youth (MEY), an organization whose mission is to:
“inspire and provide young people with the freedom and opportunity of expression, and promote a fierce but respectful dialogue among the highly diverse youth of all sects, socio-economic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs in the Middle East.”
With the perpetually negative mainstream news coverage of the Middle East, especially the recent news coverage in Iran, MEY is set to shatter age old stereotypes. To be clear, MEY is a pioneering organization of its kind in the Middle East, risking legal and political repercussions for the sake of forward thinking dialogue. Very cool.
Contradictory to the widespread western perception of hate, oppression and ignorance plaguing the Mid East region, Mideast Youth is diligently working to not only change those perceptions but in fact enable a bold, young and intelligent generation to dispel those perceptions as false. At MEY, Arabs, Iranians, Kurds, and Israelis work side by side on a variety of different projects in order to advance towards moderation and interfaith understanding.
During the previous three years, Esra and her team have worked passionately to create a forum of productive dialogue. In doing so, they and have received recognition from some of the World’s foremost media channels including the BBC, CNN, Harvard Law School, New York Times and the Boston Globe. Most recently, MEY was named a 2009 Echoing Green Fellow.
Below you’ll find a few questions from our interview with Esra:
Q: How did Mideast Youth get started?
A: Blogging phenomenon; a lot of people in the Middle East were interested and were using it to express themselves but there wasn’t enough productive communication; Israelis will create their own forum and remain there, Palestinians will do the same etc. So there was little interaction. Created Mideast Youth to counter this observance; have all ethnicities challenge each other respectfully
Q: What is your vision for MEY?
A: I want to really facilitate the fight for social change within the region. I don’t think services like Twitter, Facebook and You tube can achieve that by themselves, there had to be a more specific, regional platform to make this possible. We want to use the internet in order to bring people together. I do think that Mideast youth can really achieve co-existence; this generation is different and willing and ready to help each other. We measure our success by the people whose perceptions we’re able to change; we don’t want anyone to switch ideologies but rather we want them to be respectful and tolerant of different sects, religions, ethnicities, etc regardless of any disagreements.
Q: What is the most significant challenge you have faced as an organization?
A: Guaranteeing the security for our members; I really want to use the site to speak my mind but what about our governments and those who violently oppose us? It’s really up to us to ensure the confidentiality of the users since governments and hackers can intervene as they choose. This is an issue we continue to face today; people are thinking that I’m a developer and I do security etc. but technical limitation has been really huge; if something does happen, I would be the one to blame, so ensuring absolute security is a crucial part of my job.
Q: You’re a young woman, in the Middle East, starting an online company; with those dynamics in mind, what challenges have you faced? Are there certain pressures on you for a certain path (career path)?
A: I grew up watching my classmates and colleagues getting engaged at a very early age, thinking about work, marriage, and children, in that order. I felt I had much more to contribute than that. Of course, a lot has changed since then and a huge number of women have been fighting for social change for the past decade, and I wanted to be a part of that in my own way, which is through technology and creative media. I went to boarding school and had the opportunity to explore all the opportunities that are out there; had a unique opportunity to study abroad and saw the endless possibilities and knew I had the ability to do something powerful one day.
We would like to thank Esra for a wonderfully insightful conversation and wish MEY all the best with future initiatives!
Contributor Profile: Naiomi
Naiomi is passionate about business for good and the field of social entrepreneurship. As co-founder of SocialEarth, she hopes to help create an uplifting and informative news source for anyone interested in helping those less fortunate.
Twitter: @naiomibisram
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