One Small Thing We Can do
‘One small thing we can do’ www.ncronline.org
By Pat Marrin, National Catholic Reporter, March 2, 2009-04-03
KANSAS CITY, MO. — May and Randa are sisters. Their young faces are strong yet vulnerable as they talk to an interviewer making a short DVD about the Iraqi Student Project, a fledgling but bold initiative whose goal is to help place and fund Iraqi students in American universities and colleges.
The sisters are among some 20 other young Iraqis gathered in the outdoor courtyard of a house in Damascus, Syria, where they come each week to the “Writers’ Workshop” to improve their English skills in hopes of securing student visas to go the United States to complete their education.
May’s English is accented but clear, and on the recording she speaks with a passion that helps her find the words to tell how she, Randa, their brother and mother came to Damascus in 2006 from Baghdad. Their story echoes those of Sara, Taif, Ali, Omar and others in the group, stories about kidnapped fathers, murdered friends, threats of violence from militias, the destruction of the physical and cultural infrastructure of Iraq from 13 years of sanctions and five years of occupation. These students are glad to be alive, but they share an uprooted and anxious existence with 5 million other Iraqis either internally displaced or living as refugees in neighboring Syria, Jordan, Egypt and other nearby countries. (Last names of students have been omitted to protect families still in Iraq.)
“Before the [American] invasion in 2003, life was OK, some limitations on freedom, but OK,” May says. “After the invasion, I thought things would be better, but they were not.”
She understates the terror of their life in Iraq. After three years of relentless urban warfare between insurgents and the occupying Americans, the 2006 bombing of the Shiite Al Askari Mosque in Samarra triggered a surge in violence. May’s family is Christian, a minority, and was caught in the waves of sectarian cleansing and revenge. Her father was kidnapped by a group that never identified itself. Unable to pay a ransom, the family fled to Syria. A year later their father was released — emaciated, exhausted and deeply affected by his ordeal.
“We came to Damascus to be alive,” May says. “But they stopped my future.” She is committed to completing her medical education and returning home to work with the war-traumatized children of Iraq.
Taif is 18. He tells a similar story of life in Iraq, a kidnapped father, sudden flight with only what they could carry. But his father is still missing, and when Taif, his brother and their mother arrived in Damascus, she suffered a heart attack. “I tried to take her to a hospital but couldn’t because we were alone,” he says. Through the Iraqi Student Project, he has been accepted into an American college where he plans to study medicine, specializing in cardiology.
- A lost generation?
The project was founded by Gabe Huck and Theresa Kubasak, an American couple who moved from New York City to Damascus in 2005 after retiring from careers in publishing and teaching. The small, grass-roots effort is trying to place these young people in American schools at a time when immigration to the United States is still sharply limited and other official scholarship programs are still only on the drawing board. It highlights the need for a major commitment to prevent a “lost generation” in Iraq at a time when educated young people are essential to rebuilding their country after the war.
Huck and Kubasak began their Middle East involvement in the late 1990s with the peace group Voices in the Wilderness (now known as Voices for Creative Nonviolence), which was challenging sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Iraqis were driven from Kuwait by U.S.-led coalition forces in 1990. The sanctions, peace activists argued, prevented the rebuilding of water, sewage-treatment, electrical and other vital infrastructure systems destroyed during the war, leading to a breakdown of the health-care system that in the end claimed the lives of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children. Huck and Kubasak defied the sanctions to make four trips into Iraq to deliver medicines and other supplies.
They came to Damascus in 2005 to learn Arabic and to act as a liaison for peace groups monitoring the war in Iraq. In their daily contacts they saw the plight of thousands of young Iraqis who had fled there with their families, safe now but unable to work or complete their schooling, left idle and futureless.
- Reclaiming the future
uring a family visit to the United States in 2007, Huck and Kubasak assembled a board of directors, applied for not-for-profit 501c3 status for the Iraqi Student Project, and hired a small staff to begin contacting schools about tuition waivers. Calling it “one small thing we can do,” Huck and Kubasak set a goal to place the first Iraqi students by the fall of 2008. To support this ambitious goal, a network of volunteer English tutors was already working to identify and prepare the first pool of students in Damascus; Amman, Jordan; and inside Iraq. They faced a thicket of official forms, fees, interviews, applications and tests required to get visas, security clearance, sponsorship and funding to enable these students to begin a four-year odyssey separated from family and culture in order to bring home academic degrees and training essential to the future of postwar Iraq.
In August 2008, Huck and Kubasak were again in the United States, waiting in airports to greet the first of 14 young Iraqi women and men arriving after a 21-hour trip from Damascus by way of Rome, eager to begin undergraduate programs at 12 universities and colleges across the country, from New York to California.
Also on hand was Jane Pitz, the U.S. coordinator for the project, who had led the effort to place the first cohort and was already at work pursuing programs to place more students for the 2009-2010 school year. Now halfway into its first year, the project is struggling month to month to find the funds and the support to keep the program alive.
“The tuition waiver is one part,” Pitz said, “but the real challenge is to find local support for each student.” She needs sponsors to cover additional costs totaling around $10,000 per year. “We need people who can provide the family emotional support to help the student make it through the enormous cultural adjustment. Whatever it takes, they need to succeed,” she said.
Pitz brings to her role with the project two decades of campus ministry at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. She knows students and she knows the developmental and social issues that transcend culture for young people. One student pointedly told her, “You will be my mother.” Pitz rolls her eyes and brushes back her thick gray hair. “It occurred to me that when these kids graduate, I will be almost 75,” she said.
For the next four years, she will keep close track of each student, seeing their grades, sharing their adjustments and struggles.. . . The first Iraqi Student Project group of 14, with one semester under their belts, reconnected in South Bend over Christmas to share their experiences. Adjustments have been hard. Many report homesickness. “Iraqis are very family-centered,” Pitz explained. “They normally live at home until they marry, and they are very close. Living in college dorms is not the same. It will take time to adjust to American culture.”Some other students report being shocked at American students who text-message and use their cell phones during class. “Iraqi students come from a culture that holds teachers in such high regard,” Pitz said.
The students prepare and share traditional dishes from home. They celebrate rituals to let go of past burdens and to express their hopes for the future. The Iraqi Student Project has launched. It is a fragile miracle, an experiment in goodwill and conscience, “one small thing we can do” to make things right again.
The war in Iraq continues, but for these students, preparation for a time of reconciliation and rebuilding has already begun.
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