Her weapon is her word

“In the face of all this violence I had to do something.” Summaya Al-Marrani

Sumaya put on her veil and walked behind her uncle to attend a man’s wedding. She stood bravely in the midst of all the men. Everyone was silent as they stared at her, a woman standing in the middle of a man’s wedding in such a conservative area. She breathed deeply and began talking about violence against children during the war. The murmur of men began to grow louder, but she had completed her talk. Some of the attendees listened to her, but most of them turned away from her. She  was not to be discouraged, for this was the work she had been doing since the war began.

Next day, Sumaya stood in a meeting room for women to raise their awareness of their rights and to renounce violence against them by men, which they in turn commit against children.

Sumaya was displaced with her family from Sana’a to Arhab region, which suffers from a lack of services as well as partisan intolerance. She worked there as a teacher and lived through discrimination and violence against women, regional violence, and racial and class discrimination. She decided to educate her small community on the importance of co-existence, renunciation of violence and respect for women.

Sumaya targeted women’s social gatherings to educate women about such concerns and ways to avert them. She talked about fraternity, coexistence and peace. She organised awareness courses in schools, against school violence by teachers towards students. She spread the idea of ​​coexistence among students. She organised training courses for girls in making and selling perfumed incense to provide a simple source of livelihood to help them in their difficult lives.