Grebel student donations help Somali refugee graduate

Saida Sheikh, a Somali young woman who fled to a refugee camp in northwest Kenya when she was just nine years old, is one of two initial graduates of a World University Service of Canada (WUSC) program that gives refugees the opportunity to study at the University of Waterloo, Ont.

The 24-year-old recently graduated from UofW with a degree in international development and a minor in peace and conflict studies, due in part to the generosity of the students at Conrad Grebel University College.

While WUSC offers refugee students free tuition and room and board for at least two years—financed by a $1 levy on all UofW students—she was able to live in the Conrad Grebel University College residence for a third year because of the generosity of the Grebel students.

“Basically I was able to continue my education because of them,” she says of WUSC and the Grebel student body. “I wouldn’t have gotten further education after high school. I learned that you can be anything if you have the passion for it.”

Of her early life experience, Sheikh says, “We went away from the old country because of war and persecution.”

The enormous UN sponsored refugee camp in Kenya wasn’t adequately funded, she says, and many people went hungry and became malnourished. More than 90,000 people lived there, and more arrived every day from warring neighbouring nations.

Many of Sheikh’s peers didn’t have the opportunity to get a good education. Girls weren’t given the same educational opportunities as boys were, she says. She was one of just three girls among 86 boys in a Grade 7 class in the camp which had no stationery or textbooks. Their teachers were refugees too. She was fortunate enough to finish her high school education with good grades at an Islamic high school in Nairobi, Kenya.

According to Mary Brubaker-Zehr, Grebel’s director of student services, the students all agreed to cover 50 percent of Sheikh’s rent for 24 months and student levies from the UofW students—that Grebel students also pay—covered the remaining 50 percent.

Grebel students decided to donate an additional $10 per term so that Sheikh wouldn’t have to pay rent for the bulk of her time in school and so that they could all live in community together.

After her first two years, Grebel students decided to take that a step further.

“With Saida, we funded her for more than two years,” explained Brubaker-Zehr. “We funded her for three years. She became integrated into our community.”

Sheikh said that her time in Canada has been very difficult. The transition into a new culture, and adapting to different norms and a different educational experience took a while to get used to.

Arriving at Grebel during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting in Islam, she didn’t eat at the school’s first community meal. And as the only Somali Muslim student, she found herself having to explain her hijab and why she wasn’t eating.

“The first six months were very different,” she says, “but at the end I got used to it, made friends and tried to get along with everybody. The people were very nice and Mary Brubaker-Zehr was like my second mom.”

According to Brubaker-Zehr, Grebel’s students decided to go above and beyond the student levy because it fits the mandate of the school. “It really fits our mandate of wanting students to see beyond their own worlds and be exposed to people whose lives have been different. And Saida is just a phenomenally resilient young woman.”

Now that she’s a graduate, Sheikh is looking for a job to save up for more education. She hopes to go back to school soon, either for a master’s degree in international development studies or to pursue nursing. She also hopes to one day go back to Kenya, as she hasn’t seen her family, many of whom still live in the refugee camp, in more than four years.

Grebel students have funded three other students in this way, and they are about to welcome a new refugee student into their community this fall. l