She enjoys the job of helping young students A DEDICATED wife and a devoted mother of four girls and a boy, Azza Abu Bakur Al-Mehdar is in charge of social services at the student affairs department of King Abdulaziz University and counsels young female students who bring their social and psychological problems to her. After getting married, Al-Mehdar lived for 12 years in the US state of Arizona while her husband completed his higher studies. She lived away from her family and parents and took courses related to social studies which helped her a lot in the work she does today. “Being away from my family shaped my personality; it gave me the freedom to support myself and my family, and the effect was clearly shown in the way I raised my children,” she explained. “My five children were well-raised and were able to show their personal independence starting from the age of 10,” she said. When her oldest daughter graduated from high school, Al-Mehdar decided that it was time for her to pursue her own higher studies and so she applied for admission to King Abdulaziz University where she earned a bachelor's degree in sociology, after which she accepted a post as social worker in the university's student affairs department and was eventually promoted to be head of the department. As university students came to her with their difficulties, Al-Mehdar was able to apply what she had studied and what she had learned in raising her own family. Being the mother of five as well as the wife of a university professor has helped Al-Mehdar form her own ideas of what is involved in making up the perfect family. “Each family loves to be surrounded by those who mean the most to them; there is nothing more important than a husband and children who fill your life completely but still allow you to give to others,” she said. “In my work I sometimes see things that make me go home and look at my children and cry when I realize that some people in this world cannot find happiness no matter how hard they try,” she said. “Girls who come seeking my advice shock me with the number of problems they face in their lives whether financially, socially or psychologically.” As part of her job, Al-Mehdar found that many of the students who came to her for help were the ones who supported their families financially and that they even applied for part-time jobs in the university in order to feed themselves and their families. “The girls sometimes come to ask for financial support which is really hard to give since there are more than 1,500 students per semester who are part of our social programs,” she said. Al-Mehdar said that helping troubled girls in social sessions gave her the chance to enter into the lives of others and to see the differences that exist among communities and social groups. “I couldn't believe that there were girls who did not eat for days because they were unable to find one riyal for a bag of bread,” she said. “I once had a student who delivered documents between buildings in the university campus for 10 riyals per hour. When I asked her why she agreed to walk in the hot sun for the sake of 10 riyals, when the people whose job it was to deliver the documents preferred to pay the money rather than walk in the heat, she answered by saying: ‘My mother had a heart condition from the start of her marriage, but my stepfather insisted that she should have more children although the doctors warned her about the danger to her health of additional pregnancies.'” Al-Mehdar explained that after having eight children, the mother's health deteriorated and the husband stopped supporting the family financially. The woman's medication costs SR300 each month and the girl had to work in order to support her mother and the other children. Reflecting on the work that she does, Al-Mehdar concluded: “My job is very important to me, since helping others, especially the younger generation, the future of our country, is part of my daily life.”
