CHANGING LIVES – Badr
Badr Alzaharna, a Qatar scholarship recipient, and aspiring novelist, graduated from Al Azhaar University of Gaza with a BA in English Language and Teaching methods. When Badr was a child, his father was sadly rendered disabled following an accident at work. The financial insecurities and the growing instability of living in Gaza made him unsure of ever continuing to higher education, however the Qatar Scholarship programme provided him with the opportunity to complete his undergraduate degree. As part of the scholarship Badr also completed a three-year civic engagement programme, that is designed to inspire students to become changemakers who initiate and implement social enterprises for the benefit of others in their community. After completing Level 2 of the civic engagement programme, ‘The Art of Dialogue and Facilitation’, Badr along with other Qatar scholarship students, worked together on designing and implementing the first-of-its-kind student-led conference titled ‘INSPIRE: hearts, minds, action’ in Gaza. The aim of the conference was to discuss issues in the field of education, as well as to share students’ personal journeys in becoming active agents of change in their communities. Badr also attended a one-month intensive summer course at Indiana University’s Kelly School of Business, winning the Coca-Cola Scholarship Program funded by the US Department of State, becoming the youngest winner from the MENA region. In 2021, Badr was selected as one of six Qatar Scholarship students to design and develop an interactive panel, ‘A New Generation: Reclaiming our Future in a Post-Pandemic World’, for the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha. The panel was a huge success and highlighted the unique skills Qatar Scholarship recipients had acquired through the civic engagement programme, sharing the impact of their initiatives in their local communities and how their pay-it-forward attitude has inspired their peers to do the same. Badr was also invited to attend the Generation Amazing (GA) Youth Festival the following week, and after attending numerous workshops and meetings with GA team members, he impressed them so much that they offered him the opportunity to be a GA Youth Advocate for 2022.
