ascension

   معراج

گفت: آنجا چشمۀ خورشيدهاست
آسمان‌ ها روشن از نور و صفاست
موج اقيانوس جوشان فضاست.
باز من گفتم كه: بالاتر كجاست؟
گفت: بالاتر، جهانی ديگر است
عالمی كز عالم خاكی جداست
پهن دشت آسمان بی‌انتهاست
باز من گفتم كه: بالاتر كجاست؟
گفت:بالاتر از آنجا راه نيست
زان كه آنجا بارگاه كبرياست
آخرين معراج ما عرش خداست!
باز من گفتم كه:  بالاتر كجاست!
لحظه‌ای  در ديدگانم خيره شد
گفت:اين انديشه‌ها بس نارساست!
گفتمش: از چشم شاعر كن نگاه
تا نپنداری كه گفتاری خطاست.

دورتر از چشمۀ خورشيدها؛
برتر از اين عالم بی‌انتها؛
باز هم بالاتر از عرش خدا
عرصۀ  پرواز مرغ  فكر ماست

  فريدون مشيری

Helping women stay engaged in society

The Omid-e-Mehr Foundation began in 2004 as a privately-funded charity to provide emotional and practical support for severely disadvantaged young women in Tehran. These are women who are faced with relentless emotional and financial deprivation. They are desperately vulnerable to anti-social influences, and struggle to remain engaged in society....to learn more click here

Lady of Roses

There are some people who have had such a varied and interesting life that any single part of it can be made the subject of a fascinating documentary film. The late Homayoun Sanatizadeh can undoubtedly be included in this category. He was a cultured man, a scholar, translator, entrepreneur, and one of the pioneers of modern publishing in Iran who, unlike his western counterparts, did not achieve fame and fortune in his homeland.
About thirty years ago, with the valuable assistance and cooperation of his equally enterprising wife, Shahindokht, he decided to venture into a completely different field. They started to grow roses and set up a small traditional workshop for producing rose essence in an area outside Kerman where opium poppies were grown. The project was dogged with difficulties, opposition and mishaps at every step. First, the farmers and inhabitants were strongly opposed to the idea of replacing the opium poppy with roses which they believed would be much less profitable.
This fascinating story is the subject of a film produced by the documentary film maker, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. Entitled ‘The Lady of the Roses’, the film tells us the story of a dream come true – the dream of creating a vast rose garden in the dry and hot climate of Kerman, to replace poppies with roses and opium with rosewater, and to provide employment for 1500 families in a deprived area.

Click here for a preview

Art of Change-Making: Philanthropy at its Best

Screening of the documentary film 'Lady of the Roses,' followed by a bilingual (English/Persian) panel discussion
UCLA-CNES Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran

Location: Sunday, November 14, 2010,  
5-8 PM 

                 147 Dodd Hall
, UCLA

Leila's Story

As many of you know I spent the last year in Iran working at Omid-e-Mehr an organization who gives deserving young women a chance to a new life.  Bellow is the incredible story of one the young girls who has changed my life.
At age 9, her family sold her to a man who forced her into prostitution. At 18, she was arrested and sentenced to death for adultery, while her pimp only paid a fine.

In Iran, women can drive, vote and own property. They also can be legally independent from male relatives -- a status that is rare in the rest of the region, where the male-dominant tenets of Islam and tribal culture often subjugate women.
Yet Iran's legal system also codifies traditions that confer second-class status for women. A woman's testimony in court is worth half that of a man's. A girl is considered an adult under the law at age 9, but the age for boys is 13. The laws also deny women equal rights in divorce, custody and inheritance.

But Layla's story -- a young woman forced into prostitution and condemned to death for it -- is extraordinary in how it turned out.
Her fate changed when Ms. Sadr, a crusading lawyer on women's rights in Iran, walked into her cell and saved her. Layla's ruddy face carries an easy smile, and the sparkle in her eyes offers no hint of the harshness of her past.
"When I was little, I didn't have any dreams for my life," said Layla. "All my life, people hurt me ... until Shadi came. Now, each day is better than the last."

Today Leila is 22. She is being taken care of at Omid-e-Mehr Foundation  in Tehran. A beacon of light on a landscape which offers compassion to abused and destitute young women. Omid-e-Mehr is a rarity in Iran because it provides a way for girls to escape the shackles of their past and not be defined by it.
Social workers are teaching Layla to read and do math. She gets to draw and paint with her friends. She goes on field trips to the mountains outside Tehran, and to see a movie once a week. Most of all, she feels safe to dream about the future she wants — about finding love and starting a real family.
"It's difficult to be a girl in Iran. You survive by learning to tolerate what life brings you. That was what my life was like in the past," said Layla. "Now I dream about making myself happy, about having the whole world brought to me on a silver platter."
 
Click here to listen as Leila tells you her story

Omid-e-Mehr has saved Leila and 140 other deserving young women with similar stories.  They will only be able to thrive and to continue with their work by the generosity of other people and their belief in Omid-e-Mehr’s capacity to change these girl’s lives.

You can help make a difference click here to learn more about how you can get involved

Think Different....

Aid Workers Around the World

World Humanitarian Day pays tribute to aid workers who have risked their lives to provide relief to vulnerable and displaced communities worldwide.

2010 World Humanitarian Day Project from Action Against Hunger USA on Vimeo.

The Glass House

The fringes of Iranian society can be a lonely place, especially if you are a teenage girl with few resources to fall back on. The Glass House follows four girls striving to pull themselves out of the margins by attending a one-of-kind rehabilitation center Omid-e-Mehr in uptown Tehran.
Forget about the Iran that you’ve seen before.
The Directors Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard takes you deep into the lives of these four girls as they courageously tell their stories while they struggle for their uncertain futures. It is the untold story of young women who have been cast aside by their society. They have been abandoned, abused and neglected by their country and their families. With no resources, they had no hope of ever improving their lives, until they come to Omid-e-Mehr.
With a virtually invisible camera, the girls of The Glass House take us on a never-before-seen tour of the underclass of Iran with their brave and defiant stories; Samira struggles to overcome forced drug addiction; Mitra harnesses abandonment into her creative writing; Sussan teeters on a dangerous ledge after years of sexual abuse; and Nazila burgeons out of her hatred with her blazing rap music. This groundbreaking documentary reflects a side of Iran few have access to or paid attention to: a society lost to its traditions with nothing meaningful to replace them and a group of courageous women working to instill a sense of empowerment and hope into the minds and lives of otherwise discarded teenage girls.

For more information about Omid-e-Mehr or how to get involved click here 

To learn more about the movie or how to purchase the Glass House go to  http://www.fictionvillestudio.com/

Defiance is exciting, exhilarating

A very dear and wise person once emailed me passionately expressing his views on our current social state;

"I am bitter of a system which convinces its people, in the name of protecting ones family, to buy tanks like SUVs destroying the planet, and making orphans of another family in an accident. I am angry at a system which pays 11 cents an hour to a textile worker in Bangladesh, so I can buy my t-shirt for 5 bucks or get it free from organizations who run an event. I am frighten of our culture that considers shopping and consumption a hobby, a way, and a right without any consideration to its effect on others and the planet!! 
Therefore I find myself in a constant state of personal revolution to counteract these issues in my own existence, and honestly I recommend it to everyone, as its purposeful, passionate and exhilarating,"

In the past year living in Tehran, on a quest to find my roots I have had the chance to witness first hand the manifestation of people's passion, which is very exciting, and necessary to continue the work of justice. But it does not address what matters most: Our individual responsibility to one another and to our planet which transcends all borders, nationalities and "isms".

Blank reflection in the mirror ….

Our lives are the mirror images of our experiences and perceptions.  The direct effect of what we have undergone, felt, and seen.  The modern world has put a stop to real love and compassion.  We are too self absorbed, busy and overwhelmed with our own lives.

We don't have the ability to leap as we use to, the innocence and naiveté of our youth was murdered a long time ago.
 Thus most tend to keep their distance; don't get personally involved, and try to control their emotions.  It’s the pre-programmed auto self defense mechanism that kicks in.  


Most people now a days find commitments, compassion or personal relations a hassle there are too many distractions too much at stake. 

In today’s consumer world of take...take...take no one is willing to give a chance!  But what if from time to time we leaped for a change, went with our instincts and stepped out of the confining boxes we have created....

Invisible Man

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-move ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible; understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless head you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me.
Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of biochemical accident to my epidermis. The invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you’re constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply a phantom in other people’s mind. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all of his strength to destroy. It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.
I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are a few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time though that it is possible to carry on a fight against them without their realizing it.

--Ralph Ellison

Culture Shock

You have no idea how much your loving responses and support has meant to me. To be very honest the transition has not been so easy.  I might be in my country of birth, but to me it all feels foreign.  I have been raised in such a different environment that I feel as though I have been in a bubble all these years, and that bubble has finally burst.  Consequently your emails have deeply touched me and been my fuel for strength.    With that said I am in no way implying that I am having a horrible time, or that I am not extremely happy about my decision. In the last 10 days I have had more time to put my life under a magnifying glass and examining myself, my realities and my actions.  In other words I have been delving within, observing and really paying attention to the world around me.  I have already experienced so much and it is just the beginning.

As you all know I have started working and I can’t begin to tell you how amazing it is to have the opportunity to work with these girls.  They are all between the age of 16 to 25 and from very poor families. They have decided to come to Omid-e-Mehr on their own to receive 3 years of education, training and physiological help .  As i get to know each girl more and more every day I realized what incredibly hard lives they have had, having to overcome obstacles that I can’t even begin to imagine.  Yet they are such strong and amazing girls, I truly feel that I am learning more from them than they are from me. 

 I have a weekly group therapy session with them called the "Thinking Room" where they have the opportunity to open up and discuss what’s on their mind, the perfect opportunity to truly tap into their way of thinking, culture and psyche.  In addition to that starting next month along with a psychology student working on her PHD and I will have 8 hour workshops 2 days a week 3 times a month.  

The workshops will be discussing women’s physical and psychological health  covering important topics that tend to be more taboo in this society.   As the workshops get going I will be evaluating their impact on the girls by monitoring the girls’ point of view and scope of thought pre and post each workshop.  

Needless to say I am extremely busy trying to get everything done, while personally adjusting to this new culture and society.

Set Out on a Mad Journey

"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to."  John Ed Pearce

After 26 years of being raised and loved by two of the kindest parents known to human kind, I have left the nest and find myself a few gazillion miles across the globe.   A journey that began the moment my parents faded away hand in hand on the escalator. As they looked back one last time, I fought to hold back the tears that inevitably poured down my face as soon as I was no longer visible to them.  They were not tears of sadness or regret; in that moment they were the mere reflection of the gratitude, love and appreciation I have for both them. Knowing how much harder it must have been for them to let go at a time where most would not dare travel to Iran themselves let alone send their only daughter.  
As many of you know I traveled to Iran 2 months ago after having been away 12 years. Having been in Iran at what I call the golden time, I experienced and saw first hand this incredible green movement. The bear headed human rights activist inside me could not sit in silence and thus I have embarked on this 12 month mad journey back to Iran.
I have never been one to scare easily or shy away from a challenge.  I have all my life been told that if I want something bad enough, all I have to do is go for it, and if it’s meant to be it shall happen.  Thus when I found out that I had the chance to do my graduate thesis research on a third world country I could not let the opportunity pass me by.  I spent countless hours sending resumes and letters to organizations across Tehran so that I could find an internship as soon as possible.  Amazingly so I was able to find a position in a matter of two weeks. Those who have heard of my decision are shocked, doubtful and most worried because of the countries’ current conditions.  I do not know why I am so certain that I have made the right decision, but I know in my heart that this is going to be the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done.
I finally got to Tehran after a long 26 hour flight, half alive and half numb.  Not knowing what to expect this time around, I really had no feeling as I landed at Tehran's International Airport.  I have been here now for a few days, attempting to settle into this unfamiliar world.  I have spent the last days trying to get over my jet lag, unpack, organize, and mentally prepare for my first day of work. I will be working in an organization called: Omid-e-Mehr, where I will be helping  vulnerable Iranian and Afgan young women between the ages of 15-25 to acquire needed skills to become independent and get back on their feet.  I don’t know the details of what I will exactly be doing, and won’t find out till my first day where I will have the opportunity to tour the facility, get a feel of the place, meet the girls and get a breakdown of my responsibilities.  
I am excited, nervous, anxious, and most of all can’t wait to start.   I know it will be hard, not only because I am not familiar with the logistics of working in Iran, but also because of the great emotional impact it will have on me considering the nature of the work. I know I have the ability and strength to face this challenge and God willing, I hope that with the passion I have for this project I am able to make a difference and surprise everyone especially those who did not believe in me.
I am sure that the next few months will prove to be not only challenging but also rewarding.  I  may not be sure of anything today but I am certain of one thing...this MAD journey will change my life in ways that I can't imagine ...

IF...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son.

--Rudyard Kipling

At lass Summer must end

I was lucky to have been in Iran in such an amazing time, I got to witness and personally experience what most of you watched from the news.  It has been a life changing experience.
I can’t help but think how much I take for granted and the lack of appreciation I have for the bounty of resources at my disposal. I cannot sit back in life and hope that others will create the changes that I seek, I AM the one responsible for my future and thus I must be active in my quest.
The last few days here have been sheer pandemonium; there is a sense of fear, anger, and disappointment in everyone’s face. I find it mind boggling, shocking and so incredibly encouraging that no matter how much violence is used to barricade this movement, the people refuse to stay silent. They continue to protest, walk in the street, hunk in their cars and wear green.  I am moved by their bravery!
Most of us can’t even begin to comprehend what this nation is aching of.  Years of bottled up anger, oppression, stolen rights, forced silence and violence has exploded in the street of Tehran.

Campaign of Hope

 Tehran Pre-election was pure freedom.  Obviously not the kind of freedom we know of in most western countries but for a country such as Iran such liberty was unheard of.  I didn’t see any police, or passdars (traditional military guards) or any one for that matter in the streets attempting to arrest or bother the people.  I attended and participated a few of the peaceful rallies and saw the determination, and hope in the people’s eyes.  The green movement was planting its seeds; everywhere you looked all you saw was green.  As a result of this state of governmental latitude the youth seized the moment taking to the streets every single night leading to the election.  The streets were packed with honking cars from 6pm to about 4 or 5am every night. The roads were transformed to massive parking lots, it was practically impossible to get anywhere in the evening without sitting in traffic for hours on end. People handed out pamphlets and CDs with campaign slogans, most blasted music from their cars, many were dancing in the middle of the streets and others were on top of their parked car in traffic celebrating.  This air of hopeful joy and happiness had taken over not only Tehran but most of the major cities in Iran. You couldn’t help but want to join in on their cause.
This went on until the night before the elections where complete silence took over the city.