Aya Hamza is a sophomore attending Coral Gables Senior High who independently organized and executed a literature drive benefiting an orphanage in Tangier, Morocco. Under the title “Tangier Tots Book Drive,” Hamza received more than 400 donations from all around Miami in a span of under 10 days.
“Already having known I would have the privilege of touring the country this summer, I knew that great socioeconomic inequity plagued the rather dense population,” she said.
Hamza remembered her travels seeing an adorable little girl no more than 3 years old, rendered dirty to the point where her face bore a grayish overtone, repeatedly tap on the glass of the bus’s window in Agra, India. In Athens, Greece she saw a boy searching for scraps under a car.
“In Delhi, a group of school-aged boys who, although a few seconds earlier were giggling amongst themselves, continually begged my father and me for a few rupees to spare — justifiable by the means of wealth disparity and lack of access to education in India.”
“For me to perkily globe-trot in clear view of childhood poverty, I couldn’t help but feel guilty although their living situations weren’t directly of my doing,” she said.
Her travels resulted in The Tangier Tots Book Drive, an effort supported by many friends and family members to create a minuscule change in this global epidemic. The project was carried out in conjunction with Association La Crèche De Tanger Pour Les Enfants Abandonnes in Morocco.
She said the adoption system in Morocco makes it difficult for children there to have the same resources and education that most Americans take for granted.
In spite of the difficulties in getting the books to Morocco (in July), Hamza said the journey was rewarding in knowing that new doors and opportunities have been opened for children who now possess the resource of books to help them excel on an academic and professional level.
She said the excess books she could not take to Morocco were donated to the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital Foundation (donated in November) to be utilized in the reading program established in the cardiac unit, just in time for the holidays.
Hamza is in the International Baccalaureate Spanish program at Coral Gables and regularly volunteers at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and is a Youth Advisor to The Children’s Trust. Involved in the Kiwanis International and the National Honor Society, service is pivotal in her high school experience.
