Abdull alrahman alghazawi

Environmental Activist Ammar Al-Sukhni: My name is Ammar Al-Sukhni, and I am an environmental activist. When the initiative first started with me, everything I am doing now was just a dream. At first, I used to only criticize. Then the matter shifted toward taking action. Instead of seeing something wrong and criticizing it, I started seeing the problem and trying to change it as much as I can.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was finding enough volunteers to make any initiative I carry out successful. I see many people who encourage me and show a lot of support in the comments, saying: “I want to participate with you, I want to join you.” But in reality, sometimes I find only five or six people, even though in the comments there were more than 100 people who wanted to volunteer.

I hope that in the future, the same people who are enthusiastic in the comments on social media will also come and participate on the ground, inshallah. However, alhamdulillah, there has been more awareness among people about volunteer work, and they have started volunteering themselves and asking me to organize campaigns so that we can highlight the beauty of our city.

I am always driving around and whenever I see something that needs fixing, something wrong, or something that needs improvement, I try to work on it.

Some of the things I have worked on, for example, include painting more than 20 schools and lighting up roundabouts—more than four or five roundabouts in the city of Irbid. We also organized competitions for children that encourage and motivate them toward volunteer work. One example was a competition where I told children that any neighborhood they clean they would receive a prize: for every bag of garbage, ajallakumallah, they would receive a specific amount of money.

Among the initiatives as well, there were initiatives where I encouraged prayer. I distributed boxes containing prayer mats and Qurans in many places in Irbid, so that young people like those working through delivery applications, could pray easily and not delay their prayers.

There are also other initiatives, and inshallah, I aspire to do more.

The message I especially would like to reach all responsible authorities, is that there should be cooperation between young people who carry out volunteer work and government institutions, particularly municipalities, because some of the campaigns we conduct face long-term challenges.

For example, after planting trees, we do not have the resources to water the trees or provide the necessary materials to ensure the success of any initiative. This includes watering the trees and other matters. We hope there will be cooperation between us and the municipality.

I have been asked many times: “Why don’t you have a team for your initiatives?” But I do not want to have a team, because I do not want the same fixed group of people working with me in every initiative. I try as much as possible to involve all the young people in our community so they can participate in these initiatives and experience the joy of taking part in them.

About our youth, I like to say: “Goodness will remain among my nation until the Day of Judgment.” I want all young people in our community to participate in initiatives and try to change and develop things, because countries are built through these efforts.

Of course, the door is open to any institution, company, or school in Jordan, and in Irbid specifically, to participate in this type of initiative.

I hope this kind of initiative spreads, especially those related to planting trees. I also hope that in the future there will be specific types of planting, such as fruit-bearing trees. I hope it becomes a kind of positive contagion, so that we can contribute something to our country and leave our own mark.