'Time for us to give back': husband
Winnipeg Free Press
By: Carol Sanders
Saturday, August 09, 2008
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| IIham Al-Khateeb (left) and husband Muuxi Adam had their wedding money stolen at the airport. University of Winnipeg staff and students and Free Press readers replaced the $4,280, which the couple plans to use to fund a school for refuge children. |
Instead of spending the $2,000 donated by University of Winnipeg staff, students and Free Press readers on a honeymoon, Muuxi Adam and his bride Ilham Al-Khateeb want to fund a school for refugee kids in Africa.
"It's time for us to give back," said Adam, a U of W student and filmmaker who works with war-affected refugee youth at the NEEDS Centre downtown.
"We were speechless by the amount of money people are donating -- the students, especially, who are very low-income," he said Friday.
The morning after their wedding July 20, he and Al-Khateeb were bidding farewell to relatives at the airport. The couple hadn't yet deposited the $4,280 they received in cash as wedding gifts, and the money was taken from Ilham's purse at the airport Tim Hortons when she put it down to carry some coffee and snacks and forgot it there.
The U of W faculty and staff responded by setting up a fund for a newlywed couple and offering tax receipts to donors.
The donations rolled in, as well as handwritten messages and cards wishing the couple all the best in the future, a U of W spokeswoman said. A cheque was presented Friday to Adam and Al-Khateeb -- both U of W students -- by U of W president Lloyd Axworthy.
"I feel lucky... to be in the right place at the right time and to be surrounded by people from Winnipeg," said Adam. "It gives you the perception there are a lot of good people still and this gives me hope."
Last February, Adam travelled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was reunited with the mother he hasn't seen since they were separated by war when he was a child. Adam said there are refugee children from Ethiopia and neighbouring countries with no chance to go to school taking shelter there.
"Almost a thousand of them are waking up every day and not going to school," he said. Many flocked to the city with their single mothers after escaping from refugee camps where women and children aren't safe, he said.
"They can't go to school... A whole generation is just sitting there and not gaining or benefiting from their time there. I talked to some of the kids -- they are innocent. They deserve the opportunity for an education and we might start a foundation to help these children," he said.
"People understood our loss and tried so hard to help us. We want to see what we can do for them."