I often receive emails at work from international citizens of less-fortunate countries asking for scholarships or bursaries to attend studies in Canada for free. Normally, I would kindly decline and point them to international resources for education funding. However, today I received an email that touched me deeply and I thought I would share it with the readers of this blog.

The short email below is from a young Palestinian lady. The excerpt is slightly modified for readability, but I tried to maintain the broken English as-is. I changed her name for privacy reasons.

“first i want to say hi, i don’t know how to start , but i will say that i am ‘Sarah’ from palestine , i have 24 year’s old , i live at gaza city , from my childhood i have a dream , to visit canda , study the university there and live there if i can , but you know the situation here , so i want your help if you can.

i want to be a professor at english language , and i love french also , so if you can help me to get a scolarship to study there , it will be great , i read a lot about your instituation and i love it really , so can you help me to study there for one year also , i will keep dreaming to travel till your replay reaching .

i don’t know what i have to do to accept me , but i will pray a lot , here the war all the time , no work , no progress, no real life , and i want to do something different, i want to fly , to do something in my life , can you understand me?

allah bless you

Sarah”

Many young men and women like Sarah have lost hope of having anything for their future but more war and misery. After 60 years of conflict between Israel and Palestine, peace is becoming a hard-imagined fantasy.