More than a month after Egyptian Christian nun Maggie Gobran was announced to be on the list of the Nobel Peace Prize nominees, her homeland has done nothing to recognise her humanitarian work. The local media's attention to her efforts proved short-lived. It disappointingly lost interest in her grand charitable scheme after the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize went to the European Union. I must admit that I did not learn about the woman's devotion to assist her poor Muslim and Christian compatriots until a few days before the prestigious prize was awarded. Maggie, now 54, has given up a luxury life and a successful academic career to devote herself to improving the quality of life for the poor in Cairo‘s slums and impoverished villages in southern Egypt . “We don't choose where to be born, but we do choose either to be sinners or saints. To be nobody, or the heroes," she said. “If you want to be a hero, do what God wants you to do," she added at a gathering in the US last year. Her organisation Stephan's Children whom it founded in 1987, has grown to include around 1,500 paid workers and volunteers, a fifth of whom was reared in the Garbage City, a slum area on the outskirts of Cairo. They provide educational, spiritual, healthcare and social services for some 150,000 people. “We provide simple work but with great love. We draw a smile in the heart and spirit of every deprived child," said Gobran. Local children affectionately call the lady ‘Mama Maggie'. Others call her ‘Mother of Teresa of Cairo's Slums', after the Indian nun who ministered to the sick and the poor for 45 years and became a Nobel peace laureate in 1979. The Egyptian Mother Teresa's altruism should serve as an inspiring model of communal harmony in a country where sectarian divisions and tensions continue to be a major cause for concern.
