Emirati Students Building Homes and Global Ties

This April, a group of students from Sharjah Women’s College, United Arab Emirates, travelled to My Tho city in Vietnam to help Habitat for Humanity build homes for two families in need of simple, decent shelter. The trip was part of the Habitat’s Global Village program and was sponsored by PepsiCo International. The team was coordinated by Europe and Central Asia area office of Habitat for Humanity.

Two coordinators from the college’s business faculty, Linda Habibi and Aysen Gilroy, brought to Vietnam twelve Emirati students, eleven girls from the department of business and one from the applied media school. PepsiCo International representative Naeema Al Marzouqi accompanied the team.

In My Tho city the Emirati group received a warm welcome. For three days students labored alongside future homeowners on two Habitat houses, meantime attracting to the build site Vietnamese press and national TV channels. This wonderful experience, meetings and exchange of ideas helped foster ties between Emirati students and people from Vietnam. “Building with Habitat in Vietnam gave our students a unique opportunity of being directly involved in humanitarian work globally and helping to spread the goodwill of the United Arab Emirates,” said team leader Linda Habibi.

“We loved building homes for two poor families in My Tho, and they will always be close to our hearts. This experience has made our students more socially responsible and committed to a lifetime of community involvement, both globally and at home,” added Habibi.

In addition to the three-day build with Habitat, students visited various historical and cultural sites in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) and Hanoi. To gain better understanding of multinational companies’ practices and operations in different countries, the group toured PepsiCo International bottling factory. They met with Vu Quoc Tuan, PepsiCo International corporate communication manager in Vietnam. In Hanoi, Emirati student also visited the ministry of education and met the deputy director of the international cooperation department.

Since 2006, PepsiCo International has been sponsoring Emirati students to go on Habitat trips to help families in need of simple, decent and affordable shelter in developing countries. In 2006, PepsiCo paid for the trip to Jordan, in 2007 - to Egypt and to South Africa in 2008.