Evening Standard: Learn to Live campaign: I fled Syria to study in the UK... now I’m working on a cure for cancer

An inspiring article from the Evening Standard

A doctoral student who fled war-torn Syria to study in the UK has spoken of the importance of education in giving young people hope in conflict zones.

Yara Issa, 28, is doing a PhD in cancer research at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She hopes to help develop medicines that will reduce or even prevent the disease.

When she was 22, Ms Issa was sitting a pharmacy exam at university in Aleppo, in her home country, when the building she was in was hit by a bomb. 

She decided to continue with the assessment, despite the chaos unravelling nearby, because she did not want to delay getting her degree. 

“I finished it but it was a nightmare,” she said. “When I left the building, the scene was terrible. There was a river of blood going down the street. There were ambulances and a lot of screaming.”

Ambition: Yara Issa hopes to use her PhD in cancer research to find treatments to prevent the disease (Archant)

After that incident, she persevered with her work despite losing friends and her home to the war. 

For a year after securing her degree, every week Ms Issa would apply for multiple scholarships abroad despite having no electricity at home. But she kept being rejected. “It was so depressing,” she said. When she eventually got an interview, she had to set up a generator in the house to get the lights and internet working. 

She left Syria when The Asfari Foundation charity offered her a grant for a master’s degree in the UK. 

Ms Issa is determined to do more to help other young refugees and is now a youth advocate for War Child, the charity working with us on our Learn to Live campaign.

The initiative, with our sister title The Independent, wants to forge links between students in the UK and their peers who are living in war zones and refugee camps across the world. It is hoped the campaign will increase empathy and understanding of the issues facing young people in war zones.

We are linking schools in the UK with schools in countries such as Jordan, Iraq and the Central African Republic to let children whose lives have been devastated by war know that neither they nor their educations have been forgotten.

Ms Issa said: “Providing Syrian children with safety, education, mental and psychosocial support could prevent detrimental long-term effects both in countries hosting Syrians and Syria itself.”

The transition was not easy when she first came to the UK three and a half years ago. “It was a different universe,” Ms Issa said. “At the beginning, I didn’t feel like people had empathy or understanding. But I don’t blame them — I was a shy person. 

“It was the shock because I came from a different place, from a war zone. But once I interacted and learned more about what they like to eat and where they like to dine, it went really well.”

On the importance of her education, she said: “In order to do anything in the future I had to survive that time. It was merely the fact that ‘I am going to finish my degree’ that kept me going.”

• Yara’s name has been changed to protect her identity