It's hard not to listen to the news
coming out of Syria these days without
wondering when those who have had their
lives disrupted by the Civil War will
get a chance to start to heal.
Thankfully Syria has creative and
inventive citizens one of which is our
own Omar Soufan. Omar and his roommate
Ibrahim have established a clinic in
Lebanon designed to facilitate exactly
that kind of healing,
not only that, they're also now using 3D
printing technology. You can see it for
yourself on display across the quad over
in Rettner Hall. It's very cool. 3D printing
technology to create prosthetic limbs
for amputees in Syria. With that in mind
please join me in welcoming from the
class of 2017 Omar Soufan to the
Mel Talk stage.
Hi. Today I'd like to share with you a
personal story of mine. It's not just my
story is the story of hundreds of people.
Five years ago if you asked me where I
would be today
my answer would definitely not be this stage.
My answer would probably been in an
unmarked grave on the side of the
road in my hometown. You see you never
really forget your first anything; the
first time you lost hope; the first time
you lost someone you care about; the
first time you felt your freedom.
See. I, like any other sixteen-year-old in my
country, believed in the revolution. We
saw it as a way to get out of the
oppression that our parents face for -
for years. And like any other
sixteen-year-old I remember myself standing in front of the window every Friday
waiting for the day to come for me to
participate my first protest. I was
anxious but fear, fearful as well. I
say fearful because unlike the West we're
not faced by batons and shields we're faced by
live ammunition and as a
sixteen-year-old that obviously is scary to
me. And that day came and I participated
in my first-ever protest. It was me and
my cousins and my, from that day forward
my life changed forever.
You see I grew up as an idealist in a
country surrounded by injustice. The
strong [inaudible] the weak. Fortunately I wasn't one of the weak but
I refused to do with the strong did. One
of the hardest things about going out of
these protests is the
aftermath of it. Every day you hear about
someone dying, Muhammad, Obad,
Saafin, Fahd, you just hear names. We
saw these as martyrs we use them as fuel
to push forward toward what we wanted
but as time went by and casualties
increased we just couldn't keep up anymore.
First we were naming every protest after
some of the martyrs' names but after a
while that wasn't a possibility anymore.
There were too many martyrs and not enough protests.
As the year went by I started noticing
that what we were doing was the right
thing but we were doing it the wrong way.
I firmly believe in what I'm doing. I
believe that I can make a difference but
at the same time I knew that what I was doing
was wrong. I was willing to die for my
cause but the same time I didn't want to
be a number. I valued human life. I saw
myself as someone who can leave a positive impact on my
community and so
two years passed by. I was done with high
school and I woke up one day and I
realized I'm not supposed to be here
today if I really want to make any
change and that's when I decided I need
to leave for the US. With no background
whatsoever about what's waiting out
for me in the West. I've never taken SATs
or ACTs. I've never applied to any University before.
I packed up my stuff,
left my family and went to Illinois. When
I first went to Illinois I signed
up for a community college. I was roommate with a Syrian
refugee who later became one of my
closest friends. Distance really takes
you away from your goals. My vision
became blurry. I was way more focused on my
job. I was mainly focus on providing for
my family. I was very focused on my work --
that I forgot.
However that changed a year and a half
later. I was allowed to go back. I say
allowed because i wasn't permitted to go back.
And when I go back I didn't go
through Syria I went through a neighboring country, Lebanon, which
houses one of the biggest refugee populations. While I was walking in the city,
there I started noticing these people on the
street lying, sleeping, families, kids.
What shocked me was the reaction of
these people, the locals towards these
individuals. I would see them walking
over them as if they're stepping over a stone.
They wouldn't even pay attention to them. Whenever I
try to approach one of them, they would shy away in fear as if
I was trying to hit them.
I try to talk to multiple of them. At the
end I managed through, get through to a
woman and her baby. She was sitting by a
store and she was crying. After I asked her her name
I realized that she was from my country
and I had a conversation with her that
changed my life forever.
With that in mind I went to Syria and I
saw the huge difference over a course of
a year and a half of what happened. The polarization that happen in my community.
There were people. The strong became even
stronger and the weak became even weaker and I
knew I needed something. I needed to do something
to make a difference. I had one shot at
this
because what I was doing getting
involved in this on a large scale was
considered as treason in my country and
would get my family and my life in
danger so I had one shot at this.
I needed to help someone who people
thought could not be helped.
So I thought to myself I'm a Syrian
refugee. I lost people I cared about.
I had to move to a hostile country. I get
abused by locals but still that wasn't
enough. I need something harder so I
thought to myself, I'm a Syrian refugee who
lost people I cared about; who got injured,
lost a limb or got para or suffered
paralysis and now I'm in a hostile
country.
I'm abused by the locals and my own
community and looked as a burden and that is a person I can really help.
That's where the idea came that I start
a physical therapy clinic near the
Syrian border. I traveled back to the US.
It was my first year at UR as a transfer
student and I was excited. I went to my
advisor. I talk to my friends. I even
reach out the NGOs. I managed to get the contacts and I got a
plan, however I needed the money. I got steered
away towards a grant, it's called Davis
Peace grant. It was offered by the school.
With the help of my roommate, Ibrahim,
I applied to the grant. Unfortunately I did
not get the funding but that didn't stop us.
We decided to go personal outreach. It
was difficult because we had to keep it
secretive because of the danger. It
lurked toward my family's life. As months
went by
we're almost there. We're almost hitting our
goal and uh we were a thousand dollars
away.
However it was time to start of clinic
and I needed promises. I decided to go ahead, buy the equipment and I'll
go and figure out later.
I bought the equipment, and went down there.
While I was living there I lived where I
stayed in a healing center that housed newly
incoming refugees injured and
I shared with them food, water. I slept with
them. I heard their stories. How they were
injured. How they, what their future was. What
they hoped their future to be and their stories changed my life forever.
I was still worried about that grant but
then an angel became my mentor, Father
Cool.
He offered his help and and his gesture
changed my life forever
He meant, he managed to help cover the
rest of the cost and we managed to set up the clinic.
At first our vision was
to treat fifteen patients a month within the
small facility. Now we treat up to a hundred patients a
month and we treat Lebanese and Syrians
at the same time. We created a place
where both of them can come together and work together.
However we had another project on the
back burner that we were thinking about and that was
prosthetics. While I was there
the beginning of the first time I saw that most
amputees had no prosthetics
that was because they were expensive, unfunctional,
cosmetically unappealing and
expensive. And we thought okay let's
reach out. So through Ibrahim's contacts
we got in touch with Enable which is a for profit
within the US. We got them
introduced to our new mentor, Adam Moravian
who later introduced us to a third NGO
who has a clinic like the vision we
had, like the one we want to set up in
Kenya. This guy Paul Fotheringham agreed
to go help with us treat, treat the
patients, fit and run the training for the
technicians that we're going to hire. We
applied for the Davis Peace grant, the Davis
Peace grant another time and unfortunately we didn't get it again.
Frustrated we
decided to go public
although that posed risk on my life and
Ibrahim's but that was the only way to do it.
So we went public and we asked for
donations through media outlets to
people back home and we got the money through
support of our family and friends.
By the time the clinic was supposed
about to start and everything was
set, Paul backs out a week before the
project out of fear for his own life so
now I'm a week away from flying, already
have my ticket, I don't know what to do and I go there.
If that wasn't enough
I, when I arrived at the country one
printer was damaged
beyond repair and the other one was stuck
in customs. The project that we had
for three weeks lost twenty days of bribes
and talking to officials to get the
printer out of customs and thousands of
dollars later and we managed to get it out.
I have a couple days left and I don't
know what to do I bring the first patient.
I do his interview. I sit down
the technician and I move the clinic to the, to the room I'm sleeping in.
I'm printing day and night with the help of
the technician. You see, we, --
to some people who meet people I think that was a
failure of some sort but I left there
feeling proud that at least I kept my
promise. I, we did not stop working on the
project. We didn't reach our goal but
we're going there. It might not be today,
it might be tomorrow.
One question I always get asked is how
can we help?
Well like any country that's war-torn,
we're short on food. We're short on water. We're short on
electricity. We're short on life but what would
really short on which people don't care,
don't really not care; don't really know
about is hope. We're short on hope. If you
take someone's hope away you, you are killing him.
If you feed someone for a
day and you feed him for a month, that's not going to give them hope.
What we want is
for you to help us help ourselves. Enable
us to help our own. Give us farming land
to get our own food. By setting up
sustainable projects we can re-integrate
ourselves back to our own community.
We, if we manage to take someone who
society sees as a burden
who, who his own community has pushed
him away and take them up a level shown
that he can have a future maybe others
can. I made a promise to myself a couple
years ago that I was going to make a difference.
and I'm going to keep the promise with the help of
the Rochester community, with the help of my friends, with the help of my family.
Thank you.
Let's hear it for Omar Soufan.