Why is it so difficult to start?

I am haunted by education. I am obsessed. I sleep and wake up on the idea of educating everyone in Morocco, every girl in the Arab world, every person in Africa, every breathing soul on this earth. But let me narrow it down, let me make it doable: Rome wasn’t built in a day after all!

I moved back to Morocco deciding to take a year off to work on this project and get it started in my birth country, and then partner with similar projects to do the same in Egypt. I had high hopes as NGOs and local association calling for women’s and children’s rights are burgeoning in the Arab world. Though in Morocco the state might welcome such initiatives, it makes it hard on local citizens to start up a community project. Through bureaucracy, the government makes sure it stays in control, for at least a period of time, of whatever is or might be happening in its civil society.

Do I really need the government’s consent to help people in need? The question may sound absurd, and the answer not at all expected. Oh Yes dear, you so do… Welcome back to the motherland.

So, two months after I got back, I am lagging behind my dream, my goal and my project, waiting for the bureaucracy to get started. Alone in my new apartment, I am going back and forth with my idea. How do I make this work? How do I get started without ‘officially’ starting?

After I decided to get a head start on my grant proposal, I entered the vast world of World Pulse while looking for proposal samples. And then I met you, women of world pulse. Every time I browse World Pulse, I am heartened and proud to see many sisters who achieved so much and helped so many against all bureaucracies and despite of all obstacles.

The idea is not to start big, or small. The idea is to start, and help. And if I get to help ten girls getting an education, I will call my life a success. And if I get to show them and teach them how they can help providing education to ten other more girls, I can die in peace….

But until then, bureaucracy, you won’t kill my dream. It still has a pulse... and so do I.