Month: December 2020

An extraordinary Mar Elias alumna, Noor Abu Hjool, tells us about her senior year at MEEI, her exchange year in the states, and what she’s up to today. Your gifts have an incredible impact on a life! These youth go on to help others. Read her story:

My name is Noor Abu Hjool. 

I actually had two senior years in high school. I applied to the Youth Exchange and Study program (YES), fully funded by the U.S. Department of State, and, during the US school year, September 1, 2016 to June 4, 2017, I attended school in Oshkosh, WI, for my “first” senior year. I lived with a WONDERFUL host family. We developed a strong bond and I learned a lot from them and my AFS liaison.

High School with Host Family in U.S.A.
While in high school, Oshkosh North, during my exchange year: I participated on the volleyball team; was an active member in Key Club and Rotary; was the co-founder of an Arabic club in my high school that was run by both me and, Maryse, a Lebanese exchange student; and co-managed a blood drive campaign as a leadership class project. I made over a hundred cultural presentations in elementary schools, middle schools, my high school, various clubs and at the University of Oshkosh.

Being an exchange student in the United States has given me the opportunity to contribute to the well being of the less fortunate, so I volunteered throughout the whole school year with refugees, and I participated in volunteering events in the Day by Day Warming Shelter <www.warmingshelter.com>. In addition, I was part of Oshkosh Rotary and engaged in community service projects. 

Mar Elias High School 

After my exchange year in the United States was over, I attended Mar Elias High School for my “second” senior year, September 2017 to May 2018. During that senior year, in addition to my studies, I helped Abdalla and Hassan, two former classmates, organize an international book club for which we read the book, Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine, by Ibtisam Barakat with several students at Mar Elias and in the United States. Archbishop Chacour also participated with us.

Selected to Global Change Makers Summit in Switzerland 

During that year, I started an application process to a summit I was later selected to attend: the Global Change Makers Summit. I participated in this program that took place in Switzerland 2018, along with 59 other young leaders from all over the world. I received a fully funded scholarship to attend that summit and joined the family of the Global Change Makers, an organization that supports youth to create positive changes towards more inclusive, fair and sustainable communities. They do this by providing skills development, capacity building, mentoring and grants. At the summit, I met a girl named Yasmin who also works with refugees. She comes from Brazil. She and her team from Boston University developed an educational app called RefEd that provides basic education for refugee kids. They were trying to find an organization that would allow them to launch the app and let people use it. I helped to bring the app into an organization called “Seeds of Humanity”. Around 500 families benefited from using this app which gave me and the team great satisfaction!

Volunteered in Greece, Ibillin, Germany, Italy 

In April of 2019, I also volunteered in Athens, Greece with Seeds of Humanity organization working with them in different programs, one of which was translating between patients and doctors from Doctors without Borders, an organization that collaborated with Seeds Of Humanity. In addition, I helped with activating the kids, preparing nutrition and health packages and distributing the packages in refugee camps around Athens. My emphasis was on psychological support. In the villages of Ibillin and Shefa’Amr, I volunteered for two consecutive years (2018+2019) in a project called Sports for Life. This project’s purpose is to empower girls and help people from different backgrounds connect through sports. I went to a training camp in Cologne, Germany, to learn how to use sport as a tool to build bridges between people from different backgrounds (so sport was the tool and not the goal). In the process, our team won the fair play prize; we succeeded in conveying the message and implanting the values in the kids. 

I also was a volunteer at Baladna an organization that provides the resources and practical tools for youth activism and positive idea exchanges within the Arab-Palestinian community. As a member of this organization, I also participated in a project in Italy in 2019. It was an Erasmus+ workshop in Atermide, Orvieto, Italy, titled “Adversity can be formidable occasions, a path of resilience”. The theme of the project was social inclusion, the analysis of migration pathways, the refugees’ situation and fighting against discrimination. During the spring of 2019, I also organized a couple of two-days’ activities for exchange students between a local school in Shefa’amr and a school in Germany, and another time between the same school in Shefa’amr and a school in Italy.

Working as a Tutor, Waitress, Instructor, Mentor 

Since returning from the US, I have worked as a private tutor, a waitress in a restaurant, at McDonalds, and now I am an instructor for the Psychometric Exam, an essential exam, somewhat like the SAT exam in the US, that high school graduates take in order to gain admission into college in Israel.  Since December 2018, I‘ve been working as an instructor at Aafaq, a company that prepares students for the psychometric exam. At the beginning of 2020, I was promoted to teach the “advanced Psychometric course” which is for students who have already taken the exam and want to retake it. I also took part in interviewing the new instructors and helping with their training course that lasted for 3 months, and accompanied those who got accepted as a mentor during their first year.

Accepted at All Four Medical Schools Where She Applied  

After making a high score in the psychometric exam and doing well in the medical school interviews, I was accepted to medical school at the four universities to which I applied: Ben Gurion University of the Negev; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The Technion in Haifa; and Tel Aviv University. I have moved to Tel Aviv and have started medical school in October of 2020 at Tel Aviv University.