Always pushing hard at the barriers

Sara Al Souqi teaches autistic children to challenge boundaries, just as she sets a high standard in her work and sports.

Sarah Al Souqi plays point guard with the Baniyas basketball team. She is determined to raise awareness of sport among women but her energies are focused on special education. Lee Hoagland / The NationalShow less

When Sara Al Souqi is not teaching those with special needs to better integrate with society, she is either running a marathon, playing basketball, reciting poetry or running a book club.

While the 23-year-old Palestinian Canadian barely has free time given her athletic, humanitarian and intellectual roles, she says this busy schedule is what gives her the energy to go on and have a purpose in life.

“I find myself drawn to people and situations deemed hopeless or overlooked by a lot of us,” she says. “That is where I find my energy drive.”

She believes that is reflected mostly in her job – which is to help autistic children take classes with regular children their age at Adec schools.

Having graduated with a BA in special education from a university in Canada, she joined the New England Centre for Children eight months ago as a case manager.

She attends classes with two autistic children throughout the day, using applied behaviour analysis therapy. “My role is not only maths, science ... but the social aspect. You see children getting bullied and they are not up to the level a normal child is.

“But seeing how in one or two months they can stand up for themselves and are speaking in class ... when I started one of my students would sit not saying a single word in class.

“The most important thing in our job is boosting their self-confidence.”

She plans to go farther along that road as she pursues a master’s thesis – on children who are both autistic and deaf – at the University of Alberta.

“I worked with deaf and autistic separately ... and I was telling the professor about my work and how I also studied sign language so suggested I do this.”

On the athletic side, Ms Al Souqi has been a basketball player since she was 12.

She now plays for the Baniyas Club and participates in international tournaments and women’s corporate games.

Whenever there is a race or marathon anywhere in the emirates she rushes to participate, “anything that raises awareness for women in sports”.

Some of the events she takes part in are obstacle races. In the Aloft run for children she was the third woman to finish, in a time of two hours and five minutes. She aims to change a stereotype that she noticed many schoolgirls have against sports being “un-girlie” thinking that they will develop masculine muscles, for example. “Also, here everything I attend mostly involves foreigners, like there was the desert run in Dubai, I was the only woman wearing a hijab and at the Aloft run there was only one other lady [wearing a hijab].”

So her goal is also to raise the image of Arab women participating in such events.

She started her running activities in Canada, where she took cross country.

“There was an instance when a [basketball] referee did not let me play because I wear a hijab ... he said it could fly off and another player might trip over it.”

It was this incident that inspired her to take her love of poetry to an audience.

She has been writing poetry since she was 12 but did not start sharing her work until three years ago. “The first piece I shared was about the referee who did not let me play. It was a competition and I did really well so I decided to keep [it as an activity] once a month.”

She is also running a book club that she started with four other young women more than a year ago and it kept expanding. They meet every month to discuss books that range from historical novels to women’s issues, mysteries and autobiographies.

“My goal is to go to Tanzania, there is a volunteer programme for special needs. And I want to climb mount Kilimanjaro and Iboa.

“Helping people is a type of meditation for me,” she says.