Previous Peers of the Month

Ahmed Awadalla (Egypt) | July 2011

Meet Ahmed Awadalla, a 26-year old Cairo Governorate Local Focal Point of Y-PEER who is very enthusiastic, passionate about his work, and loves working with young people to create a positive change in the world.

Ahmed Awadalla works as a program manager of a youth sexual and reproductive health program at an NGO called Cairo Family Planning and Development Association. He joined the network after attending the Training of Trainers in July of 2010 and since then he has embarked on utilizing and sharing the newfound techniques and skills with his fellow volunteers in their program. In fact, he has been successful in conducting numerous workshops and learning sessions using Y-PEER methodologies in different settings such as schools, universities, youth centers, and other places which are frequented by the youth. Notably, the reactions of the participants were very positive which have generated a lot of questions and discussion towards the youth empowerment.

When asked about becoming the Peer of the Month, he is confident that his edge among others is his in-depth knowledge on the youth issues through his health studies background; and he keeps on expanding his knowledge-base through further self-study. However, Ahmed believes that knowledge is not enough and so it is very important that a peer educator is aware of his or her own biases and prejudices and try to avoid them. He said, “I always try my best to be very open and supportive in dealing with my peers and deliver the information they need.”

Furthermore, he believed that knowledge must be coupled with a degree of openness and confidence to discuss sexuality-related issues and topics; the qualities which he improved through his experience in dealing with different types of people from different walks of life. Despite conservative culture in Egypt, he feels comfortable initiating and sharing sexuality-related information.

His passion working with people and touching their lives gives him a lot of self-fulfillment and gratification. He believes that he can contribute in the creating positive change in the world. Through peer education, he said his personality has been improved and he became more open-minded and non-judgemental especially when dealing with different types of people. What he loves the most is the feeling of happiness when someone is grateful to him by sharing them the information that they needed for an informed decision-making. 

Now, he is the Cairo Governorate Local Focal Point with Y-PEER Egypt and is looking forward to the new tasks assigned for this role. Aside from being an active peer educator, Ahmed volunteered in various social media campaign such as the Google initiative called Health Speaks which aims to increase people’s access to health information in local languages and translated articles in Wikipedia from English to Arabic. The articles that were chosen are the most relevant to peer education work such as safe sex, birth control and colposcopy since these information is not much available and reliable in Arabic. 

Also, he started blogging about sexuality related issues in Egypt (www.rwac-egypt.blogspot.com) in an attempt to hightlight some of the issues and break the taboos around them which has a lot of impact on the society; urging people to be vocal about their sexuality and to start the real debate. 

This pharmacy graduate knows how to balance his life. On his free time, he would read books, listen to music and watching movies as he loves cinema very much. He also likes traveling and exploring new places especially if it helps him to discover more of the Cairo’s cultural scene. He hopes to bring Y-PEER’s work forward in Cairo and all over Egypt.