Shireen 36, from Al Dhaheriya – Hebron. At the age of 21, she got married to a young man from a different village, and had to move and live in a completely different environment, adapting was very difficult, as she’s wasn’t familiar with the culture or people, and on top of that, her husbands’ family warned her from mixing with others instead of supporting her integraion into the new community. 

With time passing, she became a shy, introverted and completely unsocial person, especially since she  didn’t have children in her first 5 years of marriage, which also caused greater pressure from the family to visit doctors constantly to find out the reason for this delay in childbearing. In addition to the constant threat of divorce or the marriage of my husband to another woman. All these circumstances exhausted Shireen to the point that she gave up and no longer wanted to make any attempt to change, not until she attended one of the EJ-YMCA Women Development Program community meeting, this was a life changing point for Shireen, and her first opportunity to get to learn more about the community she’s living in. 

Despite the feelings of anxiety and tension, but certainly this was a experience that she wanted to repeat. At first, there was an opposition from her husband, he refused her mixing with the community members, especially he didn’t want her to mix with men, but for the first time she pursued her inspiration and desire to attend more community meeting organized by the WDP, and so she did. She said: “I went to the second meeting and was listening and did not understand much of what was going on around me, but I was happy that I was step by step outside the circle that surrounded me for so long.”  She also adds:  “I felt that I was an important person and that I had to prepare myself well for the next meeting. I remember that I stayed up that night like a good student who was preparing for a very important exam.”

Shireen, made sure to actively attend and participate in the discussions of every awareness and training session of the WDP, putting forward her thoughts and ideas. This experience was very rich, rewarding and helped her gain so much knowledge. She said: “with the training program I learned a lot about organizing my thought, speaking with confidence infront of a crowd, I felt I was strongly present with my thoughts, free from all the tension and anxiety, and ready to reach out to the community”. By the end of the training Shireen was selected as the Coordinator for the Community Coordination Group, and was assigned to reach out to the community leaders and institutions such as the Independent Commission for Human Rights, the Municipality and others, as part of the advocacy initiative of the community to shed light of the officials on the suffering and dangers facing the community in the village. 

With continuous persistence, the Community Coordination Group managed to implementing several projects that benefits the community. Shireen contributed to supervising the implementation of a road rehabilitation project that aimed at alleviating the suffering of school students and link three communities with each other, which was supported by the WDP. 

On this experience Shireen adds:  “I never imagined that I would supervise a similar project, especially I did not have enough experience, but the determination to move forward was the biggest motivation for my continuity and success, and for becoming an agent for change rather than just a simple and silent house wife who takes orders from others.”