Most recently, we had the wonderful chance to speak to Muhammed Al-Isa, an Al Salam School graduate, cherished Syrian Kids Foundation (SKF) volunteer, and current university student at Concordia in Montreal. Muhammed’s long journey from Syria to Canada highlights his strength, resilience, and benevolence, as well as the real and lasting impact SKF has on refugees’ prosperity. In sharing his story, Muhammed sheds insight on the Syrian refugee experience, and demonstrates the hope and opportunity SKF provides to Syrian youth.
Life in Syria
Muhammed and his family hail from Al-Raqqa, a city about 150 kilometers east of Aleppo. They first fled the fighting in 2012, moving to a smaller village where the relatively peaceful countryside life came with its own array of difficulties, namely a lack of running water, barely 2 hours of electricity a day, and no science education available. They returned to Al-Raqqa in 2013, where Muhammed intended to continue his education, only for ISIS to attack their city at the beginning of 2014. During these clashes, they lost 2 family members, one of them was his 13-year-old cousin. Muhammed describes this period as the hardest he’s ever gone through.
His family remained on the move back-and-forth between different villages in the countryside and their home city, fleeing the nearby and consistent airbase bombings. In November 2014, they returned to their city, however all schools and university campuses were closed down due to ISIS restrictions. From December to June, leading up to his final twelfth grade exams, Muhammed and his fellow students continued their education through secret lessons at their teachers’ private homes. They would hide their books under their clothes and visit a different house every week to avoid drawing attention. Come June, Muhammed had nowhere to complete his exams, as he couldn’t safely travel through Syria. And so as a final option, his family made the difficult and dangerous crossing into Turkey.
Al Salam School
Through a close family friend, Muhammed’s family knew about Al Salam School and its education opportunities before their arrival to Reyhanli. There, Muhammed was able to complete his high school diploma with great success, achieving second in his school. He reminisces on his graduation day in 2016, how it was a wonderful day filled with feelings of peace, new beginnings, and community.
For a year, Muhammed tried applying to Turkish universities to no avail. Already, for newcomers unfamiliar with the process, language, and varying admissions rules of Turkey’s 100+ universities (which are not necessarily based on grades), this path isn’t promising. Many Syrians’ high school certificates dated 2015 and 2016 were no longer accepted, and students were required to pass a Turkish language exam, gain a new Turkish certificate, and re-apply. For Muhammed, this process of learning Turkish to qualify, taking the exam, and applying for another round would have taken 3 years minimum, not to mention Turkish universities would ultimately favour younger students. As these challenges closed many doors, one finally opened when he was selected as one of the recipients of SKF’s Concordia scholarships. While he was initially very worried about moving an ocean away from his family and home, he began preparing his English through SKF’s virtual tutoring program.
Getting ready for Canada
At the start, Muhammed worked with 4 tutors, and he admits that his extensive grammar knowledge (notoriously ingrained in the Syrian curriculum) was unhelpful in understanding his native English-speaking tutors. However, after a few months of persisting with the program, his English greatly improved, and he scored above average on his first mock TOEFL exam. Muhammed’s visa application took nearly 3 years to be processed, the longest out of his fellow recipients. So, he took his time learning, working with different SKF tutors on his English reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, before shifting his focus to self-studying in 2018. Muhammed even wrote his own 150-page vocabulary book over 5 months, featuring new words he encountered while reading as well as their definitions, Arabic translations and example uses. Feeling confident with dozens of mock exams under his belt, he registered to take the TOEFL in May 2018. He passed with flying colours, and all that was left was for his visa to be approved.
During this period, on top of working, Muhammed volunteered wherever he could at Al Salam school, giving back to his community. He helped with administration, reception, met with parents to register their kids, supervised field trips and summer sports, served at the on-site cafeteria, and organised students in the Pullman bus dropping kids to and from school. The inevitable difficulties he encountered with various tasks aside, Muhammed says these roles were invaluable experiences that taught him how to handle a plethora of data, earn great social experience, as well as leverage programs like Microsoft Word and Excel. With these skills, he also created many workbooks for Al Salam’s accelerated learning program, a successful initiative aimed at kids cut off from education for several years.
Though keeping busy could only so much distract Muhammed from the waiting. He recalls that waiting for the embassy was more difficult than preparing for his move. Days were passing, his friends were graduating or going to university, and his family was confused about his next move to come to Canada. Finally, Muhammed got an interview with the embassy at the end of 2018, his visa was approved the following July, and he was set to travel to Montreal two months later.
Plans for the future and final message
As for university life, Muhammed began at Concordia in the winter 2020 semester, and pulled through the challenges of online school during the pandemic. He studies Kinesiology, and he loves his program’s tight-knit community of students and teachers. He keeps in touch with some of his friends and teachers from Al Salam and finds comfort in the new friends he’s met in Montreal. With 4 semesters left in his degree, Muhammed hopes to prepare well for the MCAT, and pursue medical school in Canada. Outside school, he recently joined our tutoring team to help Al Salam students prepare for the TOEFL English exam, and we’re so excited to have him!
Asked about his message to supporters, Muhammed stressed that SKF isn’t only changing the lives of Syrian kids, but those of entire families. In restoring their hopes of pursuing a higher education and career, SKF empowers marginalised children to help themselves and others in monumental ways. Muhammed himself is an example, he remembers back in 2014, when he grappled with the thought that all his academic success would come to nothing.
“They’re not empty dollars,” he says, “Al Salam is a special school like no other, my life and many of my fellows are changed forever.”