Women’s History Month: Celebrating With Profiles on Local Women: Unsung Hero: How Asmaa Abou-Fouda’s Altruism and Work Ethic Is Making a Difference

By Scott Ruescher

Since arriving from Cairo in 2008 with her husband and the first two of their eventual five children, Asmaa Abou-Fouda has become the epitome of civic and community engagement in Revere, Mass. — a beach town on the near North Shore of Boston.

Once known for its tawdry amusement park, Revere has been home to successive generations of non-English-speaking immigrants for more than a 100 years.

Over time Abou-Fouda has taken on multiple leadership positions in response to tangible needs. During the pandemic, those in need required access to food pantries, vaccine and testing information and rental assistance. It is no wonder that her help is never refused.

As much as 15 or 20 percent of Revere residents come from Arabic-speaking countries, primarily from Morocco and Algeria, and many of are not yet proficient in English. As a language justice coordinator/community health ambassador, Abou-Fouda translates all official documents published by the mayor into Arabic and provides verbal Arabic translation of the text in videos as well. She also produces a weekly video presentation on Revere cable television for the Arabic community.

“To reach the widest audience, we put Arabic-language posters on boards in the Senior Center, City Hall, and other public places, but we also use media,” she says. “Though I am not necessarily a media person — in Egypt I earned an undergraduate certification to teach English to other second-language learners, not a degree in media.”

Besides Arabic speakers, there are Portuguese speakers from Brazil, speakers of Southeast Asian languages from Cambodia and Vietnam, and Spanish speakers from El Salvador and Colombia. If the neighbors of a Cambodian or Brazilian family do not understand the Spanish or Arabic of their Salvadoran or Moroccan neighbors, they will need their own translations from English.

Although she does work largely in response to the needs of her fellow Arabic-speaking community members, Abou-Fouda is proud of the other immigrant communities of Revere. “It is a very interesting community,” she said. “I have Latin-American friends at work in City Hall, one Peruvian and one Mexican. When the pandemic isn’t making us work remotely, we go out to lunch once a week — one week at a Latin-American restaurant, the next at an Arabic restaurant.”

Due in part to the developmental disabilities of twin sons born to her and her accountant husband in 2015, Abou-Fouda found her way into the mayor’s Commission for Disabilities, as well. In this position, she is responsible for proactively identifying specific needs of the community for such things as ramps and Braille signs in public spaces and for answering requests for such infrastructural help, including those from the significant elderly population.

When her 19-year-old daughter, a health science major and American Sign Language minor at Northeastern University, came home with a story about helping a deaf patient find the proper resources at a local workplace, Abou-Fouda began to advocate for all official public materials from Revere City Hall to be additionally relayed in American Sign Language.

“I hadn’t thought of that community before,” she noted.

Despite all this, Abou-Fouda also finds time on weekends for an extra-special project. At the American Muslim Center in nearby Everett, she runs a school that offers Arabic language learning, specifically the reading and writing skills they might not receive at home, to children ages four through 17.

“We offer seven classes every Saturday and seven every Sunday and have a total of 150 students,” she said. “I am the principal of this school — so I work on the weekend with the community that I serve during the week. It is important for the children to learn the spoken language of their culture, but also to learn the written language of the Quran, a central part of that culture.”

In the Health, Community and Engagement Department, Abou-Fouda serves as the local “network leader” for the Revere office of Union Capital Boston, a non-profit dedicated to providing access to financial, medical and residential services to under-represented neighborhoods — a collaboration that also cooperates with Revere CARES, which discourages substance abuse and promotes healthy habits.

Her active engagement in civic affairs led Abou-Fouda’s City Hall boss to recommend her for the board leadership training program for Neighborhood Developers, a non-profit community development corporation with headquarters in the nearby town of Chelsea.

“We had a guest presentation by a female city councilor from Revere who told us about her experience on that council and encouraged us to run for a seat,” she said. “I learned a lot about public life from that kind of thing and loved the community-building part too.”

Having earned her certificate Abou-Fouda, who truly symbolizes the extraordinary work ethic of so many immigrants, is now planning to add to this further dimension to her civic and community engagement, and says, “I couldn’t be happier.”

Scott Ruescher is a Storytelling Associate for the Neighborhood Developers. He was previously a Program Administrator at Harvard University and part-time English teacher in the Massachusetts prisons for Boston University.