An interview with Ruaa on the power of language learning to make social impact

Ruaa is a 19-year old university student, originally from Yemen. In 2023, she took part in our Social Entrepreneurship Changemaker course, run by Al Noor Enrichment School in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She was introduced to Amala through a friend, who happens to be a facilitator for the course. The entrepreneurship and potential for positive societal impact aspects are what sparked Ruaa’s interest. Intrigued by the role of entrepreneurs in society and driven by a desire to expand her horizons, she applied and took part. 

Can you tell us a bit about yourself? 

I’m Ruaa. I currently live in Istanbul, Turkey, but I did the course in Malaysia. I’m in my first year at university studying Child Development. 

Why did you apply for the Amala course?

My friend Asma is one of the facilitators. I got to know about Amala from her. She told me I would learn a lot, so I applied because I was interested in knowing more.

How did the Social Entrepreneurship course change your mindset?

Well, I think it gave me a lot more information about how enterprises work and the impact entrepreneurs make on society. Before, I didn't think entrepreneurs made a big impact on society. But it opened my mind. I thought that entrepreneurs only had a positive impact on themselves. And I didn't think they had a lot of impact on society.

But on the course, we talked about how social entrepreneurs help society to grow: for example, with the environment, and helping people. And I came to know more about how to become an entrepreneur who helps in society.  

Was there anything on the course that stood out to you in particular?

The facilitators insisted on us putting our ideas out in the world. They made us take first steps with our projects. They really helped us to start something.

What was your project on the course?

I worked with a group: three girls and myself. Our project was to teach our native language, Arabic, to the next generation. The new generation is forgetting the language. Learning English is good for them, but at the same time they're forgetting their native language.  We wanted to help them keep using it, give them ideas about how to use it, mistakes that they may make in their native language, and so on. 

Why did you choose to focus on language?

Sometimes we get annoyed when our younger siblings don't know how to explain to us particular things in our native language! They think the native language isn’t that important. When they explain something, there might be some words they can’t say in Arabic, so they say it in English instead. But they will forget part of the culture and we don't want them to do that. Improving English is great, but at the same time, they have to know their own language.

Can you remember how you felt when you started the course?  compared to when you finished it? Did you notice anything? 

It gave me a lot of experience in working with groups I didn't know. I worked with Syrian people, with Yemenis, and different cultures all together. We were also of different ages. There were younger people who were like 15 years old, and then teachers worked with us too. It gave me experience in how to work with younger people - who I hadn’t worked with before. It’s harder than working with older people, because teenagers always want to do things their way!

So that was challenging. We had to keep changing the idea for our project until we settled on this idea. The group work was a bit difficult, but it was a good experience.

How has the project evolved?

Our project is a YouTube channel and an Instagram page, to educate people about the language. We haven’t posted a lot yet but we have had a lot of ideas. But because I moved and started college, it’s made me a bit behind with the progress of the channel and our page.

But we’re going to come back to it whenever we're free, and focus on the project a bit more. The Instagram page focuses on a bigger group of people, and the YouTube page focuses on kids.

What do you want to do in the future? Is there anything from the social entrepreneurship course that you will be taking forward?

Well, I’m a person who wants to make my mark in society. I knew that I could do well in my major [Child Development]. So I chose it because I think kids really need help these days. Our culture is being ignored. So I thought maybe, by raising the children properly, we could reach more people. We could teach people about our culture because what’s shown in the media is not us. It's only some part of us. It's not the whole [Arab] society. We are a very big society, like more than 26 countries.  It's not good for one country to represent all of these countries. As Yemenis, we’re not out there a lot, so I thought I could help raise children to be aware of that and to try and go into the world and be able to explain themselves.

What would you say to other young people who are about to start an Amala course?

That they should start if they want to get experience, and to talk about things that they have heard before. They’re going to learn a lot more with other people. If we learn based on the media or something like that, we only get one point of view, but then when you go on the course you're going to hear people's points of views. Sometimes when you read, you only focus on the parts you think are right. But then when you hear people, you get to hear more things and understand how people really look at entrepreneurs, or how they impact society. So you get to hear people's ways of showing themselves to the world and how to make an impact. When we do this ourselves - my positive impact for example, is quite limited. But hearing a lot of peoples’ viewpoints about this is going to be something good.