Laila is from Homs, Syria. Her family fled to Saudi Arabia to escape the conflict. She completed her Horizon sponsored studies at UWC Maastricht 2022 where she endeavoured to promote a better understanding of Arab culture and Islam and share her heritage with her peers. Laila is currently studying at the University of Oklahoma in the United States and is hoping to translate her interest in physics and maths into a career in mechanical engineering.
Majd is from Aleppo but his family fled to Jordan in 2013 to escape the Syrian conflict. His education was badly disrupted and on arrival in Jordan Majd had been out of education for some years. Despite this, he was one of only ten students to be awarded a scholarship to study English at the British Council. Majd was one of the first Horizon sponsored students on the Amala high school diploma programme which he completed successfully in 2021. He currently works as a content writer and marketing officer and is also involved in a start-up venture which advises students how to apply for international universities and scholarships. Majd is currently working whilst preparing to start university.
Majd was supported by Horizon to attend UWC USA and graduated in 2018. Whilst at UWC, he explored the problems of the region from an Arab perspective with his peers. Majd is registered for a dual degree programme in Computer Engineering at Dartmouth College, and Physics and Computer Science at Middlebury College and completed the latter in 2022. In 2020, with a group of fellow students, Majd was awarded $60,000 from Middlebury to work on a STEM project. The project resulted in a website to help Middlebury students acclimatise to a post-Covid campus and included a real-time capacity tracking map, a Covid case tracker and a chat forum. On completion of his undergraduate studies he plans to pursue a postgraduate degree in Physics.
Anagheem is a Palestinian from Syria and a graduate of UWC Atlantic. She completed a BSc in Electrical Engineering at Brown University in 2020 and is currently working for Apple as a Firmware Quality Engineer. She told us, “My Horizon scholarship changed my thoughts and principles and made me question things. It gave me the courage to stand up for what I think is right, the ability to follow my dreams and it broadened my ambitions.”
