A summer camp initiated by Yara Sifri ’12 gives girls in the poorest areas of Jordan confidence in their abilities, freedom to pursue their interests and the chance to prepare themselves for a college-level education.
Founded last summer, the SciGirls camp recruited 44 underprivileged girls from Jabal Al-Natheef, Jordan, to facilities where they learned math, chess, robotics and electronics. The girls also ate lunch together and spent the afternoon swimming and playing soccer.
In honor of Sifri’s extensive service work in Jordan, Independent School Magazine featured her story and named her a “changemaker,” a distinction presented to 12 high school students. CNN also profiled her work.
Sifri plans to work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to expand the two-week camp to at least eight refugee sites in Jordan.
The feature piece on CNN noted that the residents in the Jabal Al-Natheef community “[live] in cramped conditions with poor buildings and little access to higher education.”
Samar Dudin, regional program director of Ruwwad, a local non-government organization working in Jordan, said to a CNN reporter, “Jabal Al-Natheef is a conservative community, and with adolescent girls, parents tend to be over-protective and afraid to allow girls outside unless accompanied by a family member. So these girls often miss out on the services such as a library and creative workshops that we offer [in SciGirls].”
After witnessing the difficulties that many young girls in impoverished neighborhoods face during a visit to her Jordinian grandparents in Jordan prior to starting the project, Sifri wanted to make a change and help the girls.
The experience for young girls in Jabal Al-Natheef differed tremendously from Sifri’s upbringing in Montreal. Growing up, Sifri never experienced the lack of opportunity for women in regions like Jabal al-Natheef. Her experiences in Jordan prompted her heightened interest.
“When I go to Jordan, I’m a woman, and being a woman is a bit detrimental to my everyday activities,” said Sifri.
“I went to an all-girls school [in Montreal] that was all about empowerment. I wanted to bring something to the girls in Jordan that they would not otherwise be able to have, because men are put first primarily in education, so I wanted to bring that to the girls there,”
Sifri said she enjoyed watching the girls develop throughout the program. “At first they huddled together, and were very nervous about being somewhere new, learning new things and being outside of the environment they were used to.”
“You could see them being empowered by what they were learning and the fact that someone was caring enough about what they were doing and what they learned. It got them excited and later they were trying things, they were talking, they were separated, and they’d explore the area, so it was awesome to see that,” continued Sifri.
Sifri said that her time at Andover inspired her to start the camp.
“I feel like [Andover] taught me the importance of learning from other students and paying attention to each other, and [considering] what each other thinks as opposed to having someone lecture down to you,” she added.
In addition to the camp, Sifri also started a robotics team three years ago, sponsored by Motorola, for girls in the same area of Jordan, according to Independent School Magazine.
“Since [the team was formed], the whole community got a little more interested in science and a little more accepting when they saw their daughters come home excited about something. They would bring their daughters to robotics practice and everyone got really involved, and so it was a lot easier to involve everyone in [the camp],” said Sifri.
She chose to focus on science at the SciGirls camp because she felt that all of the campers would have the same starting point, whereas in writing, for example, many of the campers would have different initial writing levels.
Sifri began planning SciGirls in the winter of 2009.
Sifri raised $30,000 by asking businesses in the community to pledge money to support the camp. She also worked with a local NGO to publicize the camp in the area.
The girls became confident not only in their academic abilities, but also on the soccer field, according to Sifri.
“At first, 80% of the girls’ heads were covered, which was pretty restrictive to play soccer in. Then throughout the camp, as they learned more science, they became confident in their own abilities and then in soccer too, they’d take off their headscarf and you’d see something different,” said Sifri.
“I wasn’t trying to be the one to tell them to [remove their headscarves], but [it] was good to see that they were opening up to new ideas and doing new things and they gained confidence in that,” Sifri continued.
Sifri said that she appreciated the recognition from CNN and Independent School Magazine.
“It’s more exciting because it gets the word out there that there is a way to influence communities. It’s a small step I guess, but it’s cool to get that out there,” she said.
