Remembering...

I found this EMAIL today. 4 years ago I sent this out to the world to describe what myself and my team in AIESEC were going through. Tonight, it served to remind me of what I felt like when I wrote it. It also reminded me of how much those events 4 years ago touched my life.

Each year since 2001, Sept. 11th has marked a milestone in my life. Sept. 11th 2002 I was at IC in Canada, talking to Dody about the conversation he and Youssef had started about AIESEC forming something called the "Salaam Program" to build exchange between the US and the Middle East. Sept. 11th 2003 I was sitting in an internet cafe in Serbia with Oussama and Youssef, and I received an email confirming that AIESEC was receiving a grant from the US. Dept. of State ECA to launch the Salaam Program. Sept. 11th 2004 I was in New York, with the first Salaam trainees.

This morning, on September 11th 2005, I just completed the first draft of my Fulbright Research Grant Application. I want to spend next year in Morocco doing research through the Fulbright Program. If all goes well, I will fulfill my goal of becoming fluent in Arabic, living in an Arab country, and be given an opportunity to really impact societal issues that are very important to me.

As I was writing my notes tonight, I was drawing up a model of how business generation leads to employment, which leads to lowered povery, and how poverty is the real cause behind social problems like child prositution, street children, drug trafficking, and recruitment into terrorism......and then I remembered it was September 11th.

On Sept. 11th 2001 I wrote:
" One of the questions a reporter asked us today was "Does what happened this week shake your idealism?" We didn't think about it for more than a second without saying "NO!!!"."

They say only time will tell. As I put the finishing touches on a proposal to work on skill-building for global business integration in Morocco I realize, 4 years later, that I was right.