Zaina Erhaim is an inspiring and devoted woman with a unique journey. In 2013, she decided to leave the United Kingdom to return to her home country, Syria, to cover and report the conflict considering the risks that it involved. At the time she was working as a broadcast journalist for the BBC in the UK but took the radical decision to report from the warzone itself. From Aleppo, she worked as a freelance writer for The Guardian and she was the project coordinator/trainer for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).
She covered the conflict for three years but also formed more than a hundred new journalists and one third of them were women. With her Syrian collegues and students, she became an important source of information for the locals and said : “Such initiatives make me feel that my Syrian colleagues and I do matter, and that our hard work is appreciated. It gives me power to go on in my daily surviving battle”.
She received many awards and prizes for her work in Syria and was named one of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women 2016 by Arabian Business. She received the prestigious Peter Mackler Award for Ethical and Courageous Journalism. She is also a Board member of the Women Now for Development.
