Yesterday we showed you a video of the trouble they are having in France with Syrian refugees but today I would like to present the other side of the coin!
By Dale Carruthers, The London Free Press
Fleeing their war-torn village in Syria, Nineb Yousef and his sister Ninwe left their family, friends, home and middle-class life behind. But the siblings made sure to pack their high school transcripts, knowing the documents would be their ticket to a better future in Canada.
Ten months later and more than 9,000 kilometres travelled, Nineb and Ninwe are two of 10 Syrian refugees selected for all-expenses-paid scholarships at Western University.
The pair say the four-year scholarship is an opportunity to achieve their dreams and build better lives in their new country. “We will do well in Canada,” Nineb said with confidence.
Living in Tel Tamer, a town in northeastern Syrian where their father is a doctor, the Yousefs weren’t initially affected when a peaceful uprising against Syria’s long-time president Bashar al-Assad turned violent in 2011. But that changed when the Islamic State started targeting members of the Assyrian community, a minority Christian group to which the siblings belong.
As the situation continued to deteriorate last fall, Nineb and Ninwe’s parents sent them to neighbouring Lebanon, where they registered as refugees with the United Nations.
Their father refused to leave his town, now under protection from the Kurdish YPG militia, because he’s the only doctor for the remaining few hundred Assyrians still in the area. In December, he survived a triple truck bomb at his clinic that killed 50 and injured dozens of others, an attack claimed by the Islamic State, media reports say.
http://www.lfpress.com/2016/08/02/assyrian-brother-and-sister-fled-syria-and-got-scholarships-to-londons-western-university
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