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Roller Derby

Hadeel 1

Can strapping roller-skates to your feet make a positive change in your life and your community? Hadeel Al-Hubaishi shows that it can!

A YES alumna from Yemen (2011-2012, hosted by American Councils in Lee, MA), Hadeel is helping to grow the sport of roller derby for young women in Beirut. She is a student at the American University in Beirut (AUB) on the U.S. Department of State’s Middle East Partnership Initiative’s (MEPI) Tomorrow’s Leaders Scholarship Program, and she was recently profiled by Huck magazine in an article and video titled “The Middle East’s first female roller derby team are shattering all your stereotypes.”

Hadeel was first introduced to roller derby by a friend on the Tomorrow’s Leaders program in April 2015, and she has been hooked ever since. With the help of a Danish NGO called GAME, Hadeel and her teammates have been learning new skills and growing the community for over a year now.

Huck magazine explains some of the benefits that Hadeel and her teammates have found at roller derby:

“For all their energy and radical verve, the players don’t view roller derby as a pioneering feminist feat. Instead, they come to practice with simpler goals in mind; to relieve the pressure that builds up over a week of intense studying, volunteering, campaigning, interning – in a foreign city, often in a second or third language – and in some cases, while worrying about what’s happening back at home.”

When she started participating in roller derby, Hadeel says, “I felt that I was just being myself as I like to be active and more engaged in fun activities. Forming the first team in Lebanon was a chance my friends and I sought after playing roller derby.” She goes on to explain, "The YES program made me continue to be the person I am, to live outside my comfort zone, and to purse my goals even if it is challenging and out of the routine.”

And roller derby certainly sounds like an exciting way to be challenged and get out of the routine! Hadeel is studying Business Administration with a double concentration in accounting and management and she expects to graduate in May 2018. She is involved in a number of volunteer activities and organizations in Lebanon, and in the future she hopes to bring roller derby with her to Yemen so that young women and girls can experience the same joy she has in the sport.

Check out the full story and cheer on Hadeel, also known as Shiny Tiny!


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