https://create.piktochart.com/output/26815584-new-piktochart
Visual Assignment
The assignment was to choose a picture that has been taken by me and explain why I love it so much.
Basically, this picture is of my father. I rarely have any pictures of my dad because he hates taking pictures in general. At this time it was a year ago where I would visit him for 9 days every 4 months because i was studying abroad. so I wanted a picture of him to keep looking at it as a great memory whenever i think of him. This is the first time he ever agreed on taking a picture because he saw that I had a valid reason. However, ever since then he would take picture, post it on facebook and tag me to always update my image of him while im there. Anyways , my main point was that my father is my star and inspiration. He raised me completely alone without any help from anyone. My dad put us first before anything. At first , when the divorce first happened he was so stressed of how to raise us but he was not ganna give us up especially that my brother is a handicap which doubled the stress for him. He managed to work and be very successful and known and still make time for us. He would bond with us in evey way possible. When the area i used to live in when i was young used to not have any games that can be played in the malls he would take me every weekend to a city 2 hours away by car to let me experience such games. He tried to be my mom and dad at the same time. He provided me with everything to not feel that i have something missing in my life. Which is true i grew up feeling a completely normal person with a completely normal life that has everything even though one of the main thing in a girl’s or boy’s life is missing which is having their mother by their side. My father refused to marry again even after we gave him our approval because he was scared she would take some of our time. He forgot hisself for us, he forget his needs, health and everything for us. We are his life just as much as he is ours. My dad is definitly over protective as i am his only girl but he always tells me that i should dress the way i like, live the way i like and love the way i like with limits to experience hardships and life in general to become the person who i am today and the person who i will become the coming years. My father in my opinion is perfect in any way possible even tho they say nothing or no one is perfect but i think i found someone perfect on this world.
Soliya Reflection
Through the connecting program, Soliya, I was taught how to communicate with others from different cultures. At first, I thought there would be a language barrier and a lot of misunderstanding; however, it turned out that there were so many similarities especially that we were a group full of girls so we related to each other a lot.
During the weeks, we would talk about gender inequality and women rights. Usually, many perspectives would be similar surprisingly. Things I liked that we managed to communicate and not keep it awkward. There was always a flow of communication and the facilitator would just pop in to ask questions. Discussing would take a lot of time and many people would share their opinions. However, some days would be awkward and boring as we would end up 4 people excluding the facilitator all of which are Arabs except one American. We would notice that sometimes our American friend is not able to share what we feel as it is something regarding Arab countries.
Overall it was a great experience, and I would actually like to join it sometime again whenever I’m completely free to learn about other people’s cultures and traditions. As well as getting advice on issues that occur in my country that is not available in theirs.
Soliya Project
Women rights
Women’s rights refer to freedoms and entitlements for women of all ages. These rights may or may not be institutionalized, disregarded or suppressed by way of law, local custom, and conduct in a selected society. Those liberties are grouped together and differentiated from broader notions of human rights because they frequently vary from the freedoms inherently possessed with the aid of or recognized for guys and boys and due to the fact activists for this issue declare an inherent ancient and traditional bias in opposition to the workout of rights by ladies and women.
Troubles generally associated with notions of ladies’ rights consist of, although aren’t confined to, the proper: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote; to preserve public office; to work; to have fair wages or identical pay; to own assets; to train; to serve inside the navy or be conscripted; to go into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights. Women and their supporters have campaigned for the same rights as men.
In Egypt or any Arab country, in fact, people are very close-minded. Ladies after marriage are under the control and supervision of men and are expected to cover themselves in public and refrain from making contact with men who aren’t from their family. Young girls before marriage depend on their fathers for everything and after marriage, the role goes to their husbands. Early marriage is a time of extreme subordination and insecurity for the women. A wife commonly lived with or close to her husband’s circle of relatives was anticipated to help her mother-in-law within the house. A young wife is pressured by her husband and relatives to get pregnant, and the pressure is more to have a son. It’s seen as a bad thing to only have daughters, and women continue trying until they get a son. Such topic interests me as I am a woman and might face some of those issues and see other women facing such horrible circumstances.
The sexual conduct and reputation of a girl from a young age are very important to the family. It’s always a matter of criticism and highlights the family and the women’s honour. A terrible reputation for one girl affects her whole family. Honor has become crucial to social existence and status. Women are expected to behave a certain way in public, especially around men. In order to protect her from getting a bad reputation. If a woman disgraces her family or husband by her actions in public a man is expected to “restore” his status by whatever means necessary, even if it’s a divorce. Some family members in rural areas believe that in order to restore honour, they need to resort to killing the daughter.
When asked about other people’s opinion, specifically non-Arabs, about the expired lady concept. They first were confused about the term “expired lady” and asked for the definition. Moreover, an expired girl means if she was not married at the age her parents find suitable she will be seen as unattractive and no one will think of marrying her. Usually, that age is from 20-25 years. There reply was that such problems don’t occur in their country and that decline of marriage is lately acceptable and having to get married at the late 30’s is acceptable as well. An example was given by an American friend that her culture, Catholic, would not force her to get married however it was against her tradition to live with her boyfriend together. Furthermore, she got married due to the outside pressure but not due to a pressure coming from her parents.
It was mentioned as well that they as well have gender inequality where they do not have equal wages and have a lot of sexual harassment through the media. In respect to the law as well, in America women would be considered bad if they get assaulted even if they have absolutely nothing to do with it. In addition, a women’s voice is usually not heard as much as a man’s voice as the society automatically thinks women are an emotional gender comparable to men. This concludes that our voice, as strong women, are usually ignored because of this stereotype which is also supported by the media sadly.
In Arab countries, if a girl is either standing with a bunch of guys or is for example in a classroom full of guys is considered an easy girl. Which was also agreed by the Americans. However, one of my American friends said that she was put in such a position where she had to take a class full of men. Nevertheless, she was respected at the end as she was only focusing on educating herself and minding her own business.
Regarding the solutions, it was thought that education might help slightly remove such an issue and nothing else was. It was said that education is the power. We should have the responsibility to educate supportive fathers to have the power to provide equality for their daughters. Additionally, educate our sons, in the new generations, to treat women equally. We couldn’t find other solutions suitable for such an issue. This solution is mentioned for both locally and internationally.
Soliya Readings
” Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication” Laray M. Barna
The reading mentions how and why people feel frustrated when communicating with people from different cultures. He mentioned 6 stumbling blocks the majority of the people face by providing examples.
First, the stumbling block is “Assumption of similarities” in which individuals accept that they are for the most part indistinguishable essentially as being human and having normal necessities of sustenance, sanctuary, and security. This can influence you to feel baffled since what you think other individuals are would be unique in relation to what they really are. Which I really can relate to, my first experience in soliya I was nervous because I was scared to say something and they would misunderstand me because maybe there understanding is different from mine. However, through the first soliya experience I sort of understood them and tried to say stuff that related to them at the same time they would understand it clearly. Having similarities with someone helps people communicate easily.
He next takes “Language Differences” as the second status. This is when individuals stick to only one importance of a word when they learn dialects. This could prompt issues since the single word can have more than one significance, subtlety and sense. for example, a word in Arabic can have several meanings so when said it can be confusing.
“Preconceptions and Stereotypes” additionally can be an issue, he says. They establishes in individuals’ brain since individuals need to decrease the danger of the obscure by making the world unsurprising. Shockingly, individuals really feel more baffled when their generalizations fall.
The fifth Stumbling Block is, he specifies, “Tendency to Evaluate”. Individuals have a tendency to assess different societies as if whether it is great or awful, trusting their own particular culture is the most regular. This can prompt clashes between individuals from different societies.
At long last, he raises the last status, “High Anxiety”. This is connected to the next hindrances as high degree of tension requires some type of help and barrier, which shows up through stereotyping or assessment, for instance
,”The Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity” Milton J. Bennett
The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) made by Milton J. Bennett is a grounded hypothesis in light of constructivist recognition and correspondence hypothesis. It expects that the experience of the truth is developed through recognition and that more unpredictable perceptual classes yield more advanced understanding. In particular, the DMIS accept that we are building limits of “self” and “other” in ways that guide our experience of intercultural occasions. The most ethnocentric development, Denial, is one wherein just dubious classes of “other” are accessible for seeing individuals from various social settings. At the flip side of the continuum, the most ethnorelative development of Integration assumes that mind-boggling self/different classes are fused into one’s close to the home character and into basic leadership with respect to ethicality in multicultural relations. This section portrays the hypothesis and utilization of the DMIS to analysis and mediation, including some exchange of measuring intercultural affectability and the fundamental reactions of the model and its estimation.
” An open way” by Adam Kahane
this reading refers to how people should solve tough problems through having to suggest 10 suggestions all of which made sense to me as it is all logical suggestions which we all know about and should do; however, we always fail to do so even though it’s very easy. We fail because it seems very challenging to us.
First Soliya Experience!
I had my first Soliya experience on Wednesday, October 25th. I was extremely nervous about it because I did not know what to expect really. Like who are the people I am going to communicate with, am I going to be able to get along with them and many other insecurities that I kept overthinking about. However, after the experience, i realized that it was totally normal and not worth the overthinking for. It was sort of awkward at first because barely anyone was willing to initiate the conversation, but whenever someone initiated others started to speak.
We first started introducing ourselves by playing the identity game by describing which aspects in life makes us who we are today. Furthermore, we started noticing that our group were all girls which was an advantage to us to talk about topics we all relate to, for example, gender inequality and many other topics. At the end, we all agreed that we are interested in learning the culture difference during this program.
#HELP-MEXICO
Natural disasters are very common in many areas of the world. It is a problem that some communities have to go through every few years, where it reaches a point that it destroys many homes, communities and many families are lost. Having a united nation and global communities that stand up together to avoid and help out sometimes it’s the only solution. To simply be there for each other. The Mexican earthquake is a vital example; with a magnitude of 7.1, it destroyed many cities and homes and loosing more than 225 people.
This game is a simple narrative of what may happen during such a crisis, and what volunteers and civilians may go through normally. Therefore it is a reminder for us to come together and try to reach out to any country that needs our help.
To learn further about this event and how to help out, you may go to…
View original post 96 more words
#HELP-MEXICO Draft 1
My Partner Mirna Gabr and I worked on a prototype and a first draft of the narrative game together.
This is the first draft of the game after making some edits and research to enhance the story and alter it to the real experience of the Mexican earthquake experience.
Here is the link to the narrative game: https://goo.gl/forms/PBlQmmAeOvDIive83
Dissecting the Digital Divide: A Case Study in Egypt
Professor, Mark Warschauer wrote this article to study hypothetically the advanced partition idea and backings this study by looking at a contextual analysis of innovation and training in Egypt. The investigation delineates the social embeddedness of innovation and the interlacing of PC get to with more extensive issues of political power, in this manner discrediting short-sighted thoughts of partitions to overcome through the arrangement of hardware. A point that drew my attention was ” Digital Divide” where he mentioned that internet is very biased as it targets richer people. People with less income might have slow internet; however, people with higher income have fast internet. He pinpoints that the problem is not the digital, however, the inequality in social classes and because of that, the internet will mostly result negatively on our society. I completely agree as it is unfair for people to not equally experience this new digital experience.
The professor also introduces the influence of digital in people’s life and attitude. He says that now digital devices are now very important aspects in an individual’s life which I can reflect on. All my duties are available online, without the internet or laptop, Tv and etc.. I would not be able to do any of my jobs. One of the big examples is my university, the American University in Cairo, all my assignment, projects, and grades are all online and would not be found anywhere else.
However, I find it really unfair to have everything provided online because not every family can afford internet at their place and which will cause a huge conflict with the student’s education as it completely depends on that. At the end, the student is blamed for having no internet and not the university for depending highly on the internet. I remember a day at University when our site broke down for some reason, many professors had to cancel their classes because they could not have access to their slides, assignments were delayed and many other things. The situation was resolved but nothing was learned from this situation.
#HELP-MEXICO
A Narrative Game
My partner Mirna Gabr and I worked on a prototype narrative game to provide awareness in about the disastrous event of the Mexican earthquake.
On Tuesday, September 19th, people of Mexico suffered from a powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1; causing at least 225 people dead and demolished at least 44 buildings.Among this catastrophe, there is a story about a victim named Frida, a 12-year-old girl was trapped in the rubble of a collapsed elementary school. This helped build the idea of creating a game that would allow people to help and sympathize with the Mexicans through this trapped girl.
After the earthquake, Paul, an American journalist decided to travel to Mexico to document the event. During his journey, he discovered a girl, who was stuck between the rubble, shouting out “Ayuda”, meaning help in Spanish. Paul had found few ways to help her, but each option…
View original post 115 more words
mirnagabr.wordpress.com 