TRINITY AS REFUGE
Omar Ahmed, Dimitri Bollegala
and Greh Moo
Refugee Sponsorship Program
Photography: Geoff George
“Without this assistance it would be impossible to start a new life in Canada”
– Greh Moo
May 2008 - Omar Ahmed ’08 first came to Trinity College in 2004 on a scholarship to study commerce and economics. He will convocate this year with plans to attend graduate school. On the face of it, his story sounds like a typical outcome of a typical undergraduate career, but there is nothing commonplace about the circumstances that preceded Ahmed’s arrival at Trinity. In 1992, he fled the Somali civil war with his family and lived in a United Nations refugee camp in Kenya for more than a decade; his family is still there. “In Somalia and Kenya, there was no hope of going to university,” he says.
Each year, through Trinity’s Refugee Sponsorship Program, begun in 1984, the College plays host to an exceptional student who is living as a refugee. Run by students and partially supported by a levy paid by all Trinity students, the program pays tuition and living expenses for a full year. Tuition is covered by the University of Toronto. Together, these measures provide a tremendous head start in first year.
“The Refugee Sponsorship Program was pretty much the first club I got involved with when I came to U of T,” says Dimitri Bollegala ’08, a fourth-year human biology and anthropology major who is now coordinator of the program. “The first amazing experience was when Omar was able to come to Canada. I went shopping with him for winter clothes, and it was his first time buying those. It really got me hooked on the program.”
All scholarships are designed to give a helping hand; but the refugee scholarship is one that literally, and dramatically, changes lives. Greh Moo ’08, who received the sponsorship in 2004, also graduates from Trinity this June. He and his family fled Burma when he was five and lived for 15 years in a refugee camp along the Thai-Burmese border. His family remains in the camp where he grew up.
“Without this assistance it would be impossible to start a new life in Canada,” he says. “One of the most important things is that you get into university right away, as soon as you get here. It’s free education and free living expenses, plus a little stipend, so you can establish yourself in one year.”
Students are selected by the World University Service Canada, a national NGO that collaborates with the UN to find exceptional students living in refugee camps; WUSC vets the applicants and sends profiles to participating universities across Canada. At Trinity, the Refugee Sponsorship student committee goes through the applications to select the student who will get the most benefit from attending Trinity.
“There’s quite a lot of hardship for these students just to reach the secondary level of schooling,” says Bollegala, “because that’s usually not available in the camp. You have to be at the top to go to a local government-run school. So these students are extremely bright.”
Moo is going to return to Thailand this summer to volunteer for a year running educational programs in the same refugee camp where he grew up. But having recently secured his Canadian citizenship, he plans eventually to return to Canada for good. “I love this country, especially Toronto,” he says.
Salahadin Mohamed ’10 came to Trinity in the fall of 2006 on the program; and Daniel Tut ’11, who arrived in 2007, is the most recent refugee student at the College.
