Abu Dhabi: Hayam Al Beloushi, an Emirati girl who completed her four-month internship at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), says she is proud to have represented her country abroad.
Hayam did her internship at Nasa under an agreement between the UAE’s Arab Youth Venture Foundation and Nasa. During her internship, Hayam was given the opportunity to take part in the design, construction and testing of advanced water recycling systems for spacecraft to assure precious resource sustainability in space.
Hayam, an engineering graduate from the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Institute gave Gulf News an insight into her experience at Nasa.
She said she was extremely happy to find out that her application had been accepted by Nasa. “Words can’t describe the feeling I had; I was honoured to be given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where I would make UAE proud,” she recalled.
Hayam had been to the US once before but that was for a vacation. She said she was initially worried that she would not be accepted in her new environment since she was an Emirati woman who covered her head but she was pleasantly surprised with the reaction. “They never looked down at me; on the contrary they were very nice to me, they even provided us with prayer rooms. They also took me very seriously and gave me serious tasks to complete,” she said.
Hayam was also only too happy to answer her American colleagues and professors about any questions they had regarding the UAE. “At first they were very interested in the UAE; they even asked me funny questions like do you wear jeans in your country? I was very happy to educate them and help them learn more about my country,” she said. In order to help her new friends learn more about the UAE, Heyam and her three other colleagues decided to form a panel that provided the US students and staff with information about the UAE.
“After the panel, people where very impressed,” she said. “It was one of the proudest moments I had during my internship because I felt that I represented my country in a positive way and I felt that I helped them learn something just like they have helped me learn in learning something, I was almost like a UAE ambassador.”
Asked about her future plans, Hayam told Gulf News that she hopes to pursue her higher education abroad and come back to work in the UAE: “I want to make a positive change in the UAE... I want to benefit my country like it benefited me and who knows maybe one day the UAE will compete with Nasa, why not? We have all the resources and we have a lot of smart Emirati youth,”
Hayam expressed her gratitude to the Arab Youth Venture Foundation for providing her with the opportunity and believing in an Emirati woman. She also had advice for Emirati youth. “Take everything you do seriously and stick to your ideas and believe in yourself.”
— The writer is an intern at Gulf News