By Naeemah Munirah Abdullah
GOMBAK, 28 May 2015: IIUM.fm campus radio today received a visitor from the city of Djelfa, Algeria, a reporter for the citys radio station.
Mariem Kerrida, 42, an active member of four organisations is accompanied by her husband on a visit to this country for a week to collect as much information about Malaysia to take home.
Her arrival at the studio was greeted by the Head of Communication Department, Dr. Zeti Azreen Ahmad.
œFor us its necessary to use Arabic from time to time. Its better to have conversations in Arabic, said Mariem, stating that Arabic is the main language used as a medium for their radio, thus she requested for Arabic deejays for her to interview.
Dr. Zeti explained to her that due to the final examination being held now IIUM.fm has stopped broadcasting its live programmes and so could not provide Arabic deejays for the moment.
The hour-long interview was therefore conducted in English and she was briefed on the operations of the radio. Former Head Producer of IIUM.fm, Wan Eizzul Wan Islam, took the visitor for a tour of the studio.
Besides being a reporter for Djelfa City radio station, one of the four organisations which Mariem is active in is ˜Kafeel el Yatim. It is an orphanage where Mariem teaches English. Another organisation is ˜Mawaddah wa Rahmah, an institution that helps couples who wish to get married. Mariem teaches principles of the Quran and also Hadith, as well as doing charity works.
‘Al-Shuttor al-Sighor is a body that helps children and teenagers from the age of 5-16 years old to conduct scientific experiments. “Our role is to edit the students work, get their inventions into competitions and expose them to people who might be interested with their skills”, she said.
Another organisation, ˜Jamiyyat Al-Tanmiyyah Basyariyyah, is an institution for human development where Meriam works as a Public Relations Officer. The Djelfa city reporter has been actively involved in all these voluntary-based organisations since the past years and doing her studies in audio visual.***