Tamesloht, Morocco: The smallest act of kindness can mean everything to a child who is orphaned and left to fend for the smallest of comforts.
On Wednesday, orphans at the Centre Fiers and Forts orphange in this tiny village were all smiles as a small group of UAE delegates attending the COP22 UN Climate Conference presented colouring books and solar-charging flashlights to extend a caring hand.
Led by Thani Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, the group presented the items to the children on behalf of the Beacon of Hope, an initiative of Shaikha Shamma Bint Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan.
Some members of the UAE delegation were moved to tears by the plight of the group of 100 children rescued from the streets and now living at the orphanage which has become for them a home and an extended family.
Al Zeyoudi told Gulf News that he was grateful to make a small stop en route to the climate conference to help the Beacon of Hope initiative bring a small measure of joy to the orphans.
“To see the happy reactions on the children's faces was amazing. When you see the reality away from the political negotiations, away from climate change, and even in normal life, you realise there are so many things to be done and we haven't even started,” Al Zeyoudi said.
“When you see the children and the interactions, you feel there is hope, that there is potential. We need to look after these people. We have to bring hope to them.”
Founder of Centre Fiers and Forts orphanage Dorothea Eikjkman offered a heartfelt thank you to the UAE and to its delegation for the visit.
“Mr. Al Zeyoudi was so good-hearted and he was good to the children, I think we have never had a visit that was so warm. It was fantastic,” she said.
Eikjkman, a Dutch national who has been living in Morocco for many years, said the reachout to children she considers as her own was touching and will be remembered.
Gestures of kindness help children gain trust in others as well as build their self-confidence because the children realise that there are people in the world who do care about their well-being, Eikjkman said.
“These children were all alone in the streets,with no food. We have given them a home. I am the grandmother to all these children. We really are mothers to all of them,” she said.
Beacon of Hope board member Mohammad Al Ghailan handed out the books and the flashlight boxes at the orphanage noting that this was the second such visit after a visit to Liberia in 2015.
The initiative has three themes, Al Ghailan said – light, literacy and life.
To extend a sense of extended family and friendship to the orphans, children from Al Shohub School in Abu Dhabi wrote short inspirational messages in each colouring book as a form of greetings from the UAE.
The personal notes were meant to give the orphanage's youngsters a sense of belonging to other children in the world.
“We wanted the children here to know that people in the UAE were thinking about them,” Al Ghailan said.
