Photo Credit: Gani Naylor
Meet Aida. She is a creative facilitator who works at the Funtasia Cultural Centre in Luxor. She is part of a team of facilitators who run weekly creative learning programs for children and youth in her community.
From a very early age, Aida had a passion for stars. She wanted to study geology. She wanted to follow in the footsteps of Farouk El-Baz, an Egyptian space scientist who worked with NASA for the Apollo space program. Aida wasn’t able to fulfill her dream of pursuing a career as a scientist.
As a woman growing up in a conservative community, she was not able to fulfill the requirement of doing field work in the desert. Unwilling to abandon her passion, she fulfilled her dream in another way. As a young adult, Aida came across the Funtasia Cultural Center. Funtasia was recruiting facilitators to lead creative learning programs for children and youth in her community.
She immediately saw the connection between her dreams and working with youth. Aida has a gift for seeing the star in every child and she knew that she could help children make those “inner” stars shine. She was able to see new possibilities for herself. In her work at Funtasia, she now helps hundreds of children and youth see new possibilities for change.
Through a partnership between the
