Paying it Forward: A Journey With Many Chapters [Pathways]

Born in Iran at the height of the Iran–Iraq war, Marjan Alavi recalled that there were very few toys available for kids to play with and the national television network only offered an hour of cartoon programming for children per day to help occupy them. Because of the strict Iranian regime, girls were not allowed to ride bicycles nor play on the street. Springing forth from the need for having a way to pass time as a little kid, Alavi and her younger brother started taking on do-it-yourself projects in her home storage room, an incarnation of the famous proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” One of these projects was building a four-wheel cart to carry the garbage bin from the kitchen to the street. “We had a big front yard and sending the heavy garbage bin to the street was difficult,” she explained. Alavi added, “Although the cart did not turn well, it was quite exciting to turn our idea into reality and see it in action.”