Defying Gravity: Social and Celestial

Syrian, from Syria; seeking Undergraduate degree in Physics and is enrolled at Lebanese International University.  

At age 5, a small window in our living room overlooking an even smaller sky in Damascus, and a telescope, were all I needed to spend every night amazed by the beauty of the stars.

Hundreds of broken earphones litter our house in Lebanon; earphones I used daily to watch videos about the stars and our universe. I’d fall asleep dreaming about a cardboard spaceship that now lies under the wreckage of my old home in Damascus countryside.

It felt I was no longer allowed to dream when I left Syria. My family, once hub for ambitious people, is now barely surviving. No more books, telescopes, or science projects, and no more dreams.

I couldn’t stay still. I had to tell the world about my pain the home I left. I wrote about magical girls and river treasures, and later about the dreams I gave up on. My writings attracted over 500K reads. Readers told me they had never been as moved as they were reading my stories.

Writing helped me realize that every girl shares a hidden pain, and a wish. Mine was a wish to drive my own car across the country and dream of visiting the stars one day.

And that made me furious. At school, I talked about education as a human right. I said that the reason every scientist we know of, from Einstein to Galileo, is a man, was not because women aren’t capable of studying science, but because for the longest time they were denied an education.

Little went on in the area where I lived; it was impossible to build a community that could foster ambitious, strong-minded individuals. But there was a local mosque where I found the opportunity to make a difference.

I spent three hours every Sunday for the past two years building that community. We taught kids the Quran, how to read and write, how to speak up, and how to turn their lives around by investing in education. I spent hours convincing girls to go back to school, a pursuit they found pointless since they were taught that they were only meant to raise children.

I told them that I’m going to be an astrophysicist, & that like Emmy Noether, I’ll discover a huge secret about the universe.

I earned the highest distinction in Lebanon’s official exams and was the only one in my school to achieve that.

Your support would land me on the moon or bring me closer to reaching the stars one day.

Why Would Donors Fund You?

I’m inspired by the greatest women in the world who fought for my right to education and who reached the stars. By supporting me, you will put the first Arab woman in space. You would build the bridge between a small neighborhood in Syria and the space for a girl who had nothing but a dream and a cardboard space ship burried under the rubble. You will be nourishing Arab women's hopes in a better future through education.

How Do You Plan to Payback?

One of the girls I taught had to give up school to support her family. Hearing her story made me cry my eyes out. I was helpless and. had nothing to offer. I tried to convince her to put her studies first knowing how hard that could be.

My dream is to be able one day to help girls like her. I want to give them hope, the same way edSeed gave me. I want to establish an organization that nourishes the dreams of young Arab women in science, particularly among marginalized populations including refugees, displaced women and girls with special needs.

Volunteer Work/Social Capital

• Became an ambassador for the HASSL enterprise that seeks to end violence against women by shifting the
  blame from individuals to society.
• I have put in over 100 hours of volunteering helping Harvard researchers identify stellar streams.
• I volunteered as a graphic designer for the Amazon Shelter Organization.
• I volunteered as a teacher at my town's local mosque teaching young girls and boys and encouraging them to invest in their education
• I tutored classmates prior to exams.

What Have You Done to Improve Yourself? Awards and Achievements

• Research assistant on a University of Oxford project.
• Highest grade of distinction attained in Lebanese high school diploma
• Earned the highest grades at my school general science department. My projects were submitted to global competitions, The New York Times, The Sun Magazine, Brevity Magazine and received multiple fee waivers for submission.
• online courses about astrophysics, philosophy, business and literature using platforms like “ MIT opencourse “ and “OpenLearn “
• courses on English, life skills, computer and graphic design at the “Makassed Association” and “MAPS”
• Organized project week at school