Saudi Students Reach Out in U.S.
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Author: Margot Rawlings (Saudi Aramco News)
Released 5 January 2010
GRAND FORKS, North Dakota, December 30, 2009 -- The Saudi Students Organization (SSO) at the University of North Dakota has reached out to its host community in hopes of promoting a positive image of Islam and Saudi Arabia while giving to those less fortunate than themselves.
Students gather for a group photo around the banner for their school-supply giveaway campaign, “Back Bags for Brilliants.”“The SSO has a range of activities here in the U.S. to demonstrate the positive image of the people of Saudi Arabia,” said Saud Al-Juaid, coordinator of a school-supply giveaway.
“As part of that wider campaign, we wanted to show that we care about people regardless of age, gender or religion. We didn’t want to tell the community how we felt, we wanted to show them. So we took a well-established Saudi Aramco initiative — the annual School Kit Campaign — and extended it to our host community.”
They dubbed the initiative “Back Bags for Brilliants.” Saudi Aramco trainee helicopter pilots Al-Juaid, Sultan Sugair, Abdulmajeed Alsheri and Misfer Alamar — along with Josh Harriman of the U.S. armed forces and King Abdullah Cultural Mission undergraduate student Abdulrahman Talib — organized a gift of 70 backpacks filled with school supplies for students at two schools in the district.
Saudi Aramco provided the funding, and Aviation manager Ali A. Al-Ashban and Industrial Services executive director Mazen Snobar provided support for the project. The students’ counselor, Daniel McCarthy, and Alma Kombargi, Aramco Services Public Affairs representative, helped them contact the schools, Lake Agassiz Elementary School and Valley Middle School.
The coordinating team encouraged other students at the university to participate by packing the backpacks in the middle of the Memorial Union under a banner that said, “Help us pack a child’s bag.”
The backpacks were gratefully received by the students, and Valley Middle School’s associate principal acknowledged the SSO members in a letter of appreciation. “Thank you ever so much for the kind act you organized, implemented and carried out,” he said. “Although politics places borders on people, it is the acts of individuals that remove them and make us all one. Our doors will always be open to you.”
In an earlier outreach, the SSO raised money for 6-year-old Tyler Harrison, who had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma.
(Article by Margot Rawlings)