Marina El Khawand
What are you fighting for? Why do you think it is so important?
As a young female living in the MENA region, and especially in Lebanon, I have a duty for my country, to fight towards making a change within all the corrupted political sector.
My cause is to build a nation where our youth will feel safe and determined to live in, and not be urged to migrate and live outside their homeland. To make a change and call for action in Lebanon is so important, the changemakers of today are the leaders of tomorrow. And how [great] if the changemakers are females! We need to activate more the role of women in the ruling sectors to be able to benefit from all the capacities and efforts that they can exert.
Tell us about yourself. What's your background? How did you become involved? What inspired you to begin living for change?
I’m a 19 year old girl. I study Law at the Sagesse University, Beyrouth. Living in Lebanon isn’t easy, every single minute here is hard. You can’t know if the next day you’ll wake up being able to eat or to circulate or... you can’t know when will you have the next explosion... and even you can’t know when you’ll get an alert that you’re not allowed to get your money from the bank anymore.
Living in a such a messy, corrupt country will definitely make you either travel or stay but make a change. As a Lebanese girl, I will not give up, and every single day, I invite my fellow colleagues to join the changing trail so we can all together be changemakers here.
After the blast of 4 August 2020, I founded an initiative called “Medonations“ and that’s where I started officially making change. We replaced the government by doing its role on the field. We went on the ground to help our people, afforded their medications, helped financially with the treatments, helped with the renovation process of the homes... and we are all a team of six ambitious dreamer girls, and I am the founder of this initiative. We were able, in two months of non-stop work, to change the lives of 350 families in Beirut that were affected by the explosion... and our work continues so now I am planning to make this initiative an official NGO.
We the youth, and especially female youth, are the leaders that our nation and world is calling for.
What have you been doing to spread the word so far?
I used social media as a great way to spread my word, to reach out to all the Lebanese diaspora, expats living abroad, to get donations from them and to get groups from them to join us physically on the ground. Moreover, we targeted all the media channels locally in Lebanon, more in Russia - RT World, Belgium TV - LesNew24 & TRT World. In addition, many magazines & world press also showcased our exceptional and unique field work.
How and when will you judge success? What’s your end point?
Every single person we meet and we are able to change his life is a success point for us. When we are able to [pay for] surgery for someone and save his life, this is a success measure. And right now, after two months we have 350 success stories. Our end point is endless, we will keep on doing our mission until our last breath and until we have all our people living well without the need of any help.
Complete this sentence: "I am #LivingForChange because..."
It’s our duty as leaders of tomorrow.
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