As Engy Gadmawla, Watchng Hills Regional High School (WHRHS) Class of 2014, embarks on her last semester of undergraduate studies at Drew University, Madison, she does so remembering her very first class on her very first day as a WHRHS Warrior in September 2010.
She was born, and spent her first 10 years living in Cairo, Egypt, before she moved in 2003, just two years after 9/11, to Watchung with her mom, dad, and sister.
“I grew up being called a terrorist,” she told the audience at the “Facing History and Ourselves” annual New York Benefit Dinner, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017 at Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers, New York City.
Between 750 and 800 people attended the dinner. Engy Gadelmawla was one of three key speakers at the event, and one of four people presented with Upstander Awards. Others receiving Upstander Awards were: Jennifer and Peter Buffett and the NoVo Foundation; and actress, playwright and activist Anna Deavere Smith.
It is the same annual benefit dinner that in 2014 recognized the work of WHRHS Social Studies Teachers Jamie Lott-Jones and Mary Sok, and WHRHS students Engy Gadelmawla, Catherine Higgins and Monica Mahal, for creating and implementing the WHRHS “White- Out to Erase Bullying” campaign. That campaign brought together some 13 New Jersey school districts and raised awareness of bullying and upstander behavior. Lott-Jones and Sok accompanied Gadelmawla to the banquet along with members of her family.
Rising out of that effort, WHRHS students helped to literally coin a new word in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to describe a new concept. It is “Upstander,” someone who is different from being merely a “bystander,” someone who, in effect, “faces history and ourselves,” and tries to do something about it.
In 2014, the WHRHS teachers and students received recognition at the Facing History and Ourselves Benefit Dinner: They were recognized as “Upstanders.” Last Fall, Engy Gadelmawla received her second Upstander recognition, for everything she has done since then. She was asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2017 Facing History and Ourselves Benefit Dinner.
Engy shared the poem with the Facing History and Ourselves Annual Dinner audience, reading: “First they came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist and I did not speak out/ Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak out/ Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out/ Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” Continuing, she shared: “For me, this poem is a daily reminder that we all have the power to be ‘perpetrators, bystanders or upstanders.’ Facing History has taught me that it is our decision what role we take.” She is an Upstander. For more information about Facing History and Ourselves, go to www.facinghistory.org/why-facing-history.
(above, l-r) Facing History and Ourselves President Roger Brooks; featured speaker and WHRHS Alum Engy Gadelmawla, who is currently a student at Drew University, Madison; Engy’s mother, Omnia Mohamed; and sister, Nansy Gedelmawla.
