Aya
“My dream is not to keep a woman on earth uneducated and governed by a society that has framed her by worn customs and traditions.”
Aya is passionate about women’s rights, and devotes her time to ensuring women have access to legal services and education. Literacy is on the forefront of her mission, and she hopes to continue the fight for women in restrictive cultures to be able to receive schooling. In her own life, she has strayed far from what others expected of her and pursued a degree in law, despite the path others wanted her to take in her career. She is selfless, encouraging of others, and believes in her own capabilities, continuing to make her dreams into tangible realities. Meet Aya. This is her story.
K: Please introduce yourself!
A: I am Aya Ozier, a master's student at the Lebanese University who studies law, a passionate girl who seeks to demand women's rights, especially rights related to custody, marriage, and divorce.
K: Describe yourself in your own words
A: I am a self-confident girl, with goals not dreams, always seeking development and knowledge, I like to learn and study. Learning for me does not stand at any limit or age and I hope to remove illiteracy from the world, only in knowledge can we challenge the poverty and injustice that exists within our societies, especially the Arab world.
K: What is your favorite thing about yourself?
A: What I love most about myself is that I am a loved person, trustworthy, and hate lying to cross borders. I love that I do not give up, sometimes I lose confidence in myself and that I cannot reach what I aspire to, but I always remember the phrase "God does not put a dream within us unless he believes that we can achieve it.” I love to help others and I always seek opportunities. Also, I am a very organized person which helps me to succeed.
K: Tell us a story. Have you had an experience that has defined you or made you stronger?
A: Many stories have made me a stronger person, but the most prominent of these stories is that I chose a university major that is different from what I planned to study, I love science a lot and my parents wanted to study pharmacy but when I decided to study law they objected even though I followed my passion and the image engraved with my memory, a woman wearing a black and white suit with high heels. I went to law school late but in less than a month I was able to study everything I missed and succeeded in all my subjects.
Law made me, made my personality, and made a strong woman; her goal in life is to help other women to change their desperate lives.
K: What advice would you give to your younger self?
A: Follow your passion even they oppose you a lot, believe in yourself, you can achieve everything you want just grow patience and ambition within you and God is with you, believes in you, and you will achieve your dreams. Even if the time goes on, put a rule inside you which is to do whatever it takes to reach your dream and if you cannot, at least achieve the honor of trying.
K: What does being a woman mean to you?
A: Women are everything to me, the beginning is the mother and therefore the world, is strength, patience, endurance, tenderness, and compassion, they can do anything and they don't need a man. She just needs to believe that she is strong and to give up the ideas that society has dedicated to owning us because they are afraid of strong women.
K: Who is a woman that inspires you? What would you say to her if she were here now?
A: A girl I don't know, she wronged herself and left her learning path, got married, and still lives a miserable life that pays the price for giving up what she protects her ( knowledge). She resorted to someone who oppressed her and lived her whole life unhappy because she can't leave him, as he is her only breadwinner. This woman planted in me an inner love of knowledge that made me get to where I am and what I will reach in the future, and my dream is not to keep a woman on earth uneducated and governed by a society that has framed her by worn customs and traditions.
I'll tell her even if it's too late, reject your reality, we live this life once.