Abdullah O. Abusham

Abdullah graduated from Petra University in 2014, and after several months of searching for a job opportunity, he realized that the Lazord Fellowship could provide him with the right opportunity to work and acquire new skills. After the yearlong fellowship he found that his passion for social work grew, particularly after working with youth at the Jordanian Hashemite Fund For Human Development (JOHUD), where he met many inspiring youth who aspired to achieve positive change.

Through the Lazord Fellowship he received several training sessions at INJAZ that had a great impact on his professional and personal life. This gave him the opportunity to be more engaged in the field of development; recognize different skills and abilities in himself; and continuously strive to achieve positive change in his community. This is why he continued to work at JOHUD after the fellowship, and is currently a project coordinator for the program YouthPower.

Abdullah’s advice to new Lazord Fellows is to embrace community work even after graduating from the fellowship. “Also, never give up, because the beauty of life is in doing what you love.”

Linda Shrafi

Linda graduated from the Hashemite University with a bachelor’s degree in banking and financial science. As a student, she had a strong interest in volunteer work, PR, and social media.

Linda has participated in capacity building e-learning opportunities covering youth development, health care and rights issues, advocacy, communications, and project management.

Linda is a trainer in civic engagement and youth empowerment at the Jordan Youth Commission as well as a member of and a team leader at the International Platform of Young Entrepreneurs (PFYE).

She is a member and volunteer at I Dare for the Online Love Speech campaign.

As a Lazord Fellow, Linda was the project coordinator at the Princess Basma Youth Research Center. She is currently the production coordinator at the Royal Film Commission.

Noha Mosaad

Noha Mosaad has been working and volunteering in civil society for the past 4 years. Her passion for civic engagement motivated her to travel from her hometown to the capital to explore more opportunities and develop her skills to further serve the community.

Eager to learn, she joined a number of student activities and simulation models which enabled her to develop her leadership capacity and to acquire different set of skills including communication and problem solving. After graduation, she was accepted into the Lazord Fellowship Program. The program helped her develop a wide range of technical skills such as project management, proposal writing and team building. It also allowed her to expand her network of professionals and non-profits in the field of development locally and internationally.

As a fellow, she joined the team of Microsoft CRS as a Project Manager where she focused on providing youth with a full eco-system environment. Noha was directly involved in developing a variety of capacity building workshops in different governorates to equip the participants with essential skills they needed to know about the market and its dynamics. That experience added a lot to her skills such as coordination, organization, content development, relationship management, planning, scheduling and following up skills.

Furthermore, she completed an internship at the Gerhart Center for Civic Engagement and Business Responsibility at the American University in Cairo (AUC). There, Noha worked as a Program Assistant for “Community Lab Program” in cooperation with United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Her work focused on promoting dialogue and collective problem solving among youth from different backgrounds, organizing different trainings and group discussions to enable participants to collaboratively and collectively develop solutions to address different community needs.

Yara Ali Moustafa

Yara joined the Lazord Fellowship in 2011 right after graduating from college. She was placed at INJAZ Egypt, and this is when her story in civil society began. During her year at INJAZ she worked in all of the departments, and was able to learn a lot about entrepreneurship and work readiness education. Shortly after the end of the fellowship, she joined INJAZ as a full-time employee. She started as a field coordinator, then project supervisor, and finally was promoted to become the head of the department of INJAZ schools. In this position, she managed around six different projects in greater Cairo and upper Egypt public schools. She was nominated by her managers to take part in different conferences and training courses. The five years that she spent at INJAZ were full of learning, excitement, exposure, and achievements. Throughout her work at INJAZ, she explored her potential in different sectors and recognized her deep passion for working in the field of youth development. Yara is currently an operations manager at Blooms Egypt, a youth development company. In addition, she is completing her master’s degree in public administration at the American University in Cairo.