Our New Friends.

Although Jill has another week with her trainees, I finished my workshop today. The director of AAMAL asked me to have coffee while my participants were working on results and asked if I would be willing to do another training next week. Since Jill will still be training, I said yes.

I need to talk about the folks in my workshop. Most were from Syrian media—radio, TV, newspaper & web. It was a great mix of senior and young reporters—most of the young being females who spoke perfect English. If I could only clone these people and bring them back to Atlanta. They were so involved, so sincere and so eager to advance the image of the community of the disabled in Syria. They were so inquisitive that I only got through half of the powerpoints I had created. But it doesn’t matter because the discussions were so intense and exciting, we ran two hours over each day. After the session, they received lovely certificates and crowded around the stage for pictures—of the group, of one another and of me.

I was taken by the seriousness with which they participated in this workshop. It’s clear the media here is desperate to cover a population that until now was hidden from sight. What made the experience even more poignant was that my interpreter, Hazem, is in a wheelchair. One of the young girls came up after today’s session and said it was the first time she had interacted so directly with someone disabled and realized that she was looking beyond his chair to see the person. A great Ah ha moment.

Given the people I met this week, I think Syria’s media is in great hands.