Executive director speaks at the washington center

Washington- June 23rd 2008.

On June 23, 2008 Damanga’s Executive Director, Mohamed Yahya, was invited to speak to a group of approximately 60 students from The Washington Center and the University of California, Washington DC. The speech lasted for a little over 90 minutes, leaving time for questions from the students. The amount of interest in Mr. Yahya’s speech was evident by the number of questions asked and the intricacy of the topics, all of which he answered with great detail, energy and passion. In his speech, Mr. Yahya recounted his own experiences as a child growing up in Darfur as well as his student movement in Cairo. These topics, particularly the latter, seemed to provide inspiration to the Washington Center student’s who could see plainly the kind of difference that students, with far less resources than they, could make. Mr. Yahya finished off the speech by discussing more current situations such as the effect that China has and could have on the government in Sudan, as well as the types of things that students could do to make a difference on their own. This inspirational and moving speech ended with a standing ovation.