SWOT

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threatens.

No!

Students Welfare Oriented Tasks run in Lohdran, Pakistan by some young boys e.g.  Owais Sajjad, Liaquat Arshad etc. Don't ask me how I contacted them. I have no idea. It seems they have always been my Facebook friends. :)
Faisal Naseer also plays an important role in this project, but he doesn't live near. He lives in Karachi. He is the guy who introduced Dr Fajcsák Zsuzsa to me. So everything is connected to education, to English teaching.
Dr Judy Findley also a part of this work. She can't go to Pakistan anymore, she has got Parkinson Disease. The same awful problem that my father had in his last 10 years.

But I hadn't known much about SWOT until the week before last week when Owais asked me to record a video for the Inauguration Ceremony of the next event. I had no idea what they needed but was very happy to help them so I recorded a video that was not good. Not surprisingly... It was my first selfie video recorded and cut by myself...

Well, every time I do something, I want to do perfectly. So I wanted my video to be translated into Urdu because people in Lohdran don't speak English.
So I went to Hajira and asked her to translate my English words into Urdu. It went really well, but the video arrived late... I didn't mind it at all. Wanted to continue the work. But how?

There is a superb thermal bath in Göd, near the capital city of Hungary. Last Sunday evening I went there with Gyuri, my friend to brainstorm. While enjoying the open air hot water in the dark evening a plan was born.

We connect the school in Diósjenő with a school in Pakistan.
But which school? I called DrZsu to ask her advice. As we were talking on Viber the school's name came into our minds in the same second. It wold be Roshni Public School in Qayyumabad, Karachi run by Hasan and Parveen Mahmood, a beautiful couple with three children. They live in England but visit Pakistan regularly. It's fantastic how they support this school. I've already talked to Parveen on Viber last year so it wouldn't be a brand new friendship.

Right after I'd talked to DrZsu I called Faisal Naseer to tell him about our plan. He was very much excited and couldn't stop thinking about it. He immediately wanted to establish a Non Governmental Organization to give a frame to our work. Ok, but if we are thinking about an NGO, why aren't we thinking about building a Bridge Between Christian and Muslim world?

So today is the birthday of our Build-A-Bridge campaign or movement where we would like to Build Bridges between Christian and Muslim people all over the world by encouraging them to learn and understand each other, by providing them useful materials like videos, online programs, helping them to connect through social media like Facebook, and visit each other in their homes.

Im very much sure this world needs Bridges. We want to be a very humble but strong one for people who want to use it.

Catch Up

It's been almost a year I last wrote post. Its time to catch up.

When I applied for my Pakistani visa the Ambassador came down to the reception hall and looked over my documents. Everything was ok and he was very happy to see my CV and Mission Statement which wasn't required but I attached them because Im a kind of overzealous person... He said my visa would be ready within a week.

Exactly one week later I released my trip. With no reason. A month later I was sitting at my father's death bed. I understood why I cancelled my trip.

But the story had just started.

A few days later I got a phone call from the daughter of the Pakistani Ambassador. Hajira asked me if she can do anything about teaching because she is an English teacher but being not able to speak Hungarian she can't find any job. Later I asked her how she got to know my phone number. Well, his Father brought my CV and Mission Statement home and laid it on the dinner table...

A few days later we met at the residence of the Ambassador's family. I drew out an old idea which was called Challenge Program for my students. The idea was to invite people who can't speak Hungarian and make different activities to practice English while having fun.
So we sat down with my friend Gyuri and Hajira and planned different activities for this new Challenge program.

We had many different ideas but children were not very keen to come. Only a few children from Diósjenő were brought to the programs by Gyuri. It was a complete failure. I just gave it up by September. But Hajira wanted to see those children from Diósjenő and she forced me to continue the Challenge program.
Well, we started thinking about a program we had planned yet not completed. It was to visit the Pakistani Embassy. Ok, lets do it! Let's take the children to the Embassy.

But Gyuri was very much motivated and he invited the Mayor of the village as well. The Mayor was happy to come. Well, if the Mayor comes, the school's Headmaster comes too. If he comes, the owner of the local bakery shop also comes. At the end there was a complete diplomatic delegation going to the Embassy. Children were entertained by Hajira downstairs, and the delegation was entertained by the Ambassador upstairs.

At the end of the reception the Ambassador accepted the invitation to the opening ceremony of the school festival in Diósjenő in February.

This is chapter one. More about Pakistan and me is coming soon.