Arwa Salem: Media competed with me early on and I ended up in private business

Arwa Salem recounts her journey to "Al-Rai", addressing a message to women and youth.

Upbringing

I am the only daughter among seven brothers. Praise be to God, my father was an officer in the Jordanian Arab Army and later the Qatari Army. In the family home, I inherited discipline and hard work. I obtained my high school diploma (Tawjihi) from Qatari schools and then joined the University of Jordan.

My passion was to study journalism, media, or law, but fate directed me elsewhere; I studied at the Faculty of Commerce for a year, then switched to sociology at the Faculty of Humanities.

This specialization did not prevent me from experiencing journalism. I joined Al-Aswaq newspaper because it was close to my home, working in the "Universities Department" before being transferred to the "Local News Department", but the newspaper was eventually shut down.

My passion for media competed with me during high school, as I was in contact with Qatar Radio for live broadcast programs and contributions on various topics. This passion remained until my graduation from the University of Jordan, when I went to the Jordan Radio and Television Corporation to audition for voice acting in radio dramas. I did not complete it because I was not a member of the Artists Syndicate, so I tried my hand at writing radio series scripts, including the series "Hope of Life" (Amal Al-Hayat).

I wrote the five-part series "Thorns with the Scent of Roses" (Ashwaq Bira'ihat Al-Ward). I chose Mr. Fuad Al-Shouli to train me in this, and we wrote a wonderful script, but the faltering circumstances of Jordanian drama at the time prevented it from being produced for television, so it was adapted for radio and broadcasted via Jordanian Radio.

I also worked as a collaborator on Amman FM radio in more than one program, and then at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan in an administrative position for 3 years.

I got married and moved to Petra, only to return to radio work at Voice of the South Radio / Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, where I had a live on-air program.

Voluntary Work

I launched an initiative called "May the Plants Seek Forgiveness for Them" (Liyastaghfir Al-Nabat Lahum), and with a volunteer team, we cleaned nearly 100 cemeteries across various governorates and planted them with olive trees, to serve as a charity for our deceased in Jordan.

Then I moved to the "Propagation Project" with the aim of preserving Arabian Balsam (Yusr) and Jordanian Moringa trees. The project is 11 years old and has an "excellent" reputation inside and outside the Kingdom, and my products compete with imported ones.

A Story with an Old Woman

There is a story I must tell. While on our way from Aqaba to Amman, I saw an old woman in one of the southern regions grazing her sheep on a mountain with no grass. I decided to establish the "Panicoum Project," which introduces a type of fodder for the first time that ensures high productivity without consuming large amounts of water. It became a distinguished project in the field of fodder and helped farmers obtain seeds, achieving a 50 percent savings on the feed bill.

Women's empowerment, what does it mean to you?

I have a view on this term. A woman was, is, and will remain the foundation of society and the basis of empowerment in successful homes, by standing behind her husband and children. If the wife is gone, the home collapses, and the husband resorts to another woman to help him and support that home, while the children turn to another woman to replace their missing mother's role.

A woman is capable of patience, endurance, and coexistence more than a man. How many homes were built upon a woman, and how many homes could not continue without a woman? Women are empowered, and they lack nothing except moral support to continue in a world where lifestyles and ideas have changed.

Partisan Work

At the University of Jordan, my graduation research was about youth participation in partisan work, through which I learned about party ideologies. However, circumstances did not allow me to join, believing that politics has its own people.

A Message to Youth

Search for your self early on, and keep charting the course of its path upward. Life is about experiences and opportunities, and it is wonderful that we create opportunities ourselves. Look for your path even if it is difficult, for pleasure comes with hardships, and light comes after a dark tunnel. The most important thing is choosing the right tunnel entrance.

My path was very difficult, but it changed my life into a path different from everyone around me, and I stood out.

Private Business

My desire to develop a heritage-preserving Jordanian restaurant came by introducing the Moringa plant into its various dishes. We searched for a place away from street noise and congestion to convey the restaurant's message of the exclusivity of home-cooked Jordanian food, frequented by Arab brothers and expatriate Jordanians who love to taste popular dishes.