Meet the journalist from Egypt who writes about Bulgaria

Today we continue the series of stories about migrants, who have been successfully integrated into the Bulgarian labor market.

Today we continue the series of stories about migrants, who have been successfully integrated into the Bulgarian labor market and contribute to the development of the country’s economy.

Our series is part of the MIraGE project, on which WCIF is working with partners from several European countries. The project aims to ease the access and integration of third-country nationals who seek employment in the host countries of the European Union.

Ayman Hamed is part of this project.

Ayman is from Egypt and he graduated from the University of Cairo in 1992. He used to work as a journalist for some of the prominent local publications, and translate books from English to Arabic and Hebrew.

In 2012, Ayman married a Bulgarian woman and a year later he became a father for the first time. He made the difficult decision to leave Egypt and live in Bulgaria to be next to his wife and newborn. His wife played a key role in his adaptation and he made efforts to get acquainted with Bulgarian history, the current situation in the country and language acquisition.

When he search for a job, Ayman doesn’t have much choice due to his age and the limited number of open positions for people from the Arab world – mainly in restaurants and in the outsourcing business, which he eventually choose. The multicultural nature of the customer service centers helps him to integrate relatively easily, and Ayman finds more and more cultural and linguistic similarities between Arabs, Bulgarians and Roma.

However, he began to miss the socially useful work as a journalist and after 4 years as an agent, Ayman decided to create a web platform for Arabs living in Bulgaria and the European Union – www.tawasul.eu. It helps migrants overcome the language barrier and read news from the country and the EU in their mother language.