Dubai Police Second Lieutenant Haifa Al Mazmi has travelled thousands of miles to see a child smile, and has worked long hours to rehabilitate a school, educate students, or buy them stationery and school uniforms. All she knows is that “humanity begins with giving.”
Haifa Al Mazmi set an example to be emulated in humanitarian work, as she underwent unique experiences that contributed to leaving an imprint on the lips of many children.
Al Mazmi joined Dubai Police in 2014 in the General Department of Community Happiness as part of the Radio and Television Programs Department team. Through her work in the field of radio monitoring, she contributed to dealing with many complaints received through live broadcast programs in the country, and working to resolve them by communicating with the relevant departments to make callers happy, which contributed to her receiving many certificates of thanks and praise.
Al Mazmi began her career in the Dubai Police as a first corporal, then rose through the ranks to reach the rank of second lieutenant, while pursuing her university studies in sociology, which was her path to studying and delving into human societies.
Al Mazmi says: “As part of my personal nature, I always want to communicate with people from different backgrounds and learn about the origins of cultures, so I decided to study sociology. Here, my passion for communicating with people from a human perspective increased, so I thought a lot about volunteering to help the poor, but I did not find a way to do so.”
In 2019, Al Mazmi was browsing a social media page when she saw university students visiting a poor village in Zanzibar, highlighting the need for the locals to renovate the village school. They suggested the idea of volunteering for anyone who wanted to help, so she found the opportunity and contacted them, starting her first humanitarian volunteer journey.
Al Mazmi says: “I went to my mother and told her about my desire to volunteer and travel to Zanzibar to help the poor people of one of the villages in renovating the school. She refused categorically because I am a girl and she could not allow me to travel. I assured her that there were about seven girls who would participate in volunteering with me, but she renewed her refusal. However, after insistence, insistence and discussions, she agreed to fulfill my wish.”
Al Mazmi and a group of university students set off for Zanzibar and headed to a remote village by bus.
Al Mazmi continued to work with the university students for two weeks, during which they contributed to the successful restoration and revitalization of the school, which had a great impact on the level of happiness of the students, teachers and villagers.
In August of the same year, the university students proposed going to Kenya to help a village renovate a school.
Al Mazmi set out with the male and female students, and also went through a difficult experience. For the first time in her life, she lived in a tent, and worked hard for three weeks to restore the school. She spent Eid al-Adha in the area, and celebrated it with the families and children, away from her family.
After the success of the second trip, Al Mazmi headed on her third volunteer trip to another village in Zanzibar to work on restoring a new school. Her volunteering continued for three weeks due to the closure of airports as a result of the repercussions of the Corona pandemic. After completing the school’s restoration, she worked with volunteers to launch several initiatives to help the residents.
In 2023, Lieutenant Haifa Al Mazmi traveled to Nepal, where she and university students provided stationery assistance to students in a poor village school, helped them learn English, and introduced them to Arab culture, the UAE, and Gulf dress.
Al Mazmi stresses that volunteering is considered an important human experience that everyone who is able to undergo should allocate time for, as it enriches a person’s personality with concepts and values, and makes him realize the extent of the blessings that God has bestowed upon him from family, relatives, and the embracing homeland, in addition to teaching us that true happiness comes from “giving.”
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