Eid Mubarak! With wishes for a blessed feast to our Muslim friends

Maadi Messenger highlights interning in Egypt

The September issue of the Maadi Messenger is out. It is celebrating internships at the Center for Arab-West Understanding. The cover page presents German DANS project intern Willem Helbing.

The Guest-Editor of this issue was CAWU journalism intern Harm van der Wilt (Dutch) who also wrote the feature article about meeting our interns. Intern Romana Mustafa Moussa (Dutch/Egyptian) wrote with great love and admiration about Daughters of Kings, a women’s empowerment project run by Sister Parthaniya of the Coptic Orthodox diocese of al-Qussia.  Romana is Muslim and reflected the core values of our organization  in her enthusiastic piece on this Christian project. This is the fruit of working with both Muslims and Christians in a positive space full of mutual respect for the different beliefs and traditions we represent in our office.  Intern Nora Hannisdal (Norway) wrote about her experiences in Upper Egypt in her piece a Taste of Asyut. The stories of our interns reflect our activities and in particular the visit to the village of Sarakna in the governorate of Asyut in Upper Egypt. The experience was an eye-opening adventure for our Egyptian and Foreign interns alike!

Filip Hulsman, meanwhile, presented on September 11 his experiences in Sarakna in a powerpoint presentation for the Moria Church in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. Romana Moussa,  Harm van der Wilt had returned to the Netherlands and attended. So did Joost Scheffers who interned with us in December 2015 and a group of CAWU friends.

       Cornelis and Filip Hulsman during presentation

From left to right: Harm van der Wilt, Romana Moussa, Joost Scheffers and Sara Ebid.

This newsletter is also a great opportunity to congratulate our Muslim friends with the Eid al-Adha! It is a time of being together with the family and care for the poor—exemplary and universal values that any member of the human race can admire.

Former board member Mary Lai is preparing for the first ever Dragon Boating festival on the river Nile on Saturday October 1. We placed more background about this on our Facebook page. For anyone who is in Egypt or visiting Egypt: join the event. It is certainly going to be very special and unique.  CAWU is proudly sponsoring this event with publicity and promotion among our interns, alumni and friends. Please like us on facebook to receive updates on our organization: https://www.facebook.com/cawu99/?fref=ts

Cornelis Hulsman,

Deputy Chair Center for Arab-West Understanding