From Radio to Wasla: How did Ahmed Najjar’s experience differ?

Life doesn’t always do you justice, sometimes it puts you in the face of obstacles and challenges to know how determined and patient you are.

Ahmed Al-Najjar, a student of media and mass communication at Al-Azhar University, although he suffers from difficulty in pronouncing “stuttering”, but his passion for media pushed him to take many courses, to work in different radio stations, and to find his way to work in the profession of journalism, starting from writing reports and editing News, right up to recording broadcasts and podcasts.

Ahmed, 21, used to suffer from shyness that controls him a lot, especially when it comes to speaking in front of a group of people, so he often feels confusion that hinders his ability to communicate his idea to the public. Ahmed remained silent a little, hesitating to express and share his opinion, but his participation in training with Wasla made the matter different.

Ahmed talks about his experience by saying, “When I made it up to the interview stage, I was very happy and afraid at the same time. Happy that I was qualified, but afraid that I would not be accepted into the training. Then after acceptance, I was afraid of the difficulty of speaking and how will I communicate with my colleagues, my team. But once the first hour of the first day passed, with the activities of breaking the ice, all the fear was gone.” 

Wasla training represented a quantum leap for Ahmed, after seven training days he was able to stand in front of his colleagues and present the idea of the digital advocacy campaign for his team, boldly, forcefully, and without any shyness. Ahmed describing his experience saying, “After 7 days of training in the second Wasla program, I discovered a quantity of the energies that young people have, what energy I have, how much I can to accomplish, and able to reconcile with myself, able to accept the idea, the idea of disability or any problem that a person may face.

Ahmed waited until the last days of Wasla training, to go out in front of the audience, all his fellow trainees, staff, and coaches, stood in front of them all, grabbed the microphone, and began talking about his story, about his success that he achieved with his determination and strength, and he talked about that, saying, “The goal is not to tell people my story, the goal is to break the barrier, break the obstacle, end a wrong hypothesis that I had put in front of myself!”

What distinguished Wasla’s experience, according to Ahmed, is that it integrates persons with disabilities and persons without disabilities. He was happy with this cooperation. To talk about that with great enthusiasm, saying, “For the first time I get training with people with disabilities, in this experiment I got an answer to a question I asked myself a lot … How do people with visual disability use mobile phones ?!, so that I know in training that there are programs that help them use their phones, in addition to adapting a number of social media applications for them.”

Ahmed’s training with Wasla strengthened his self-confidence, helped him to get to know a group of people, who later became a second family to him, through them he was able to be more daring, and more able to break the barrier of shyness, “Being with Wasla was a privileged experience, which took me out of the shell that my life was a hostage to her.” Describing his experience with Wasla.

Ahmed says, “I was able to speak in front of a large number of people, and this helped change my life for the better. The training added boldness to me! This word I used to know its meaning, without actually practicing it.” Although Ahmed provides newscasts, he sees that the audacity to speak in front of people, is unlike speaking in front of a radio microphone.

I Thank the Social Development Forum, which gave me this great opportunity! Thanks to Wasla program, and all the trainees, as it became a part of my life, and I became part of its family. With these words, Ahmed Al-Najjar concludes his speech, expressing his great gratitude for this opportunity that made a change in his life, which pushed him towards determination and strength, and renewed great passion within him.