Alumni Update: Yacoub Dahah, Mauritania
I was first introduced to the Bin Bayyah Foundation in 2015 by ECNU (the English Club of Nouakchott University) because they needed interpreters for the Starkey Hearing Foundation mission that they were sponsoring, which lasted for a week. I went back to volunteering for them during their second mission with the American Starkey Hearing Foundation early in 2017, but this time I stayed as a permanent volunteer.
Later that year, I went to the U.S. to participate in the Global UGRAD Program which was a significant milestone in my life. After I finished the program and came back home, I rejoined the foundation. The manager offered me a job as her assistant after she saw how dedicated I was to the foundation’s work and how much I learned about volunteer work during my Global UGRAD experience. Needless to say, I accepted the offer, for this is exactly the kind of work that I want to have a career in, because it gives me a great sense of purpose and I find myself in it.
At the foundation, we focus on sponsoring charitable medical missions. Our main partner is Starkey Hearing Foundation which we have had three missions with so far, in which we served more than 3000 hearing loss patients and provided them with free hearing aids. We have also had eye care missions, in collaboration with Vision Care, in which we provided free eye surgeries, eye tests, and eyeglasses for people in need. We also sponsor local doctors to carry out charitable medical missions.
