Studying medicine in Gaza is extremely expensive. The six-year (17-semester) program costs almost  $4,000 a year, not including the additional amount needed for books, medical equipment and transportation.

Gazans are not wealthy; 80% of families here can barely afford to cover the cost of meeting their basic needs, much less the additional ones of medical school tuition.

My reporting here started when my friend Omar Al Najjar mentioned how an initiative he coordinated helped two of his friends overcome their struggles regarding university tuition. Being the curious girl I am, I interviewed them.

My first interviewee is my friend Ahmad Hamouda, whose father passed away in 2010, leaving him, along with four younger brothers and one sister, to continue living in Gaza under profoundly difficult conditions, in the care of his unemployed mother.

Balanced against their obvious need for immediate help, was the fact that Ahmad had promised himself he’d stay in medical school, in order to be able to better provide for his family over the long haul. He had finished high school with a GPA of 96.1% in May 2015 and immediately enrolled in the medical school program at the Islamic University of Gaza. This journey has been full of obstacles; and yet Ahmed has managed to overcome all of them, by the grace of God.

My second interviewee, Tahani Samara, comes from a family that’s more financially secure than Ahmad’s. Nevertheless, Tahani faced her own difficulties. Her struggle to pursue her dream started in the fourth year of medical school. At that time, her three younger siblings entered university too, and she was immediately impacted by the huge increase in the demands on the family’s finances. Although finances had been tight before, there had been enough to cover her tuition. That was no longer true.

Up until her sixth year in medical school, Tahani kept hoping against hope that she would be able to graduate, finish up her internship, get a job, and pay everything back. To her shock, the university suddenly announced that no one could start their internship until their tuition had been fully paid. She panicked and initially hid this information from her family, not wanting to burden them. Instead she faced this all alone, having not the slightest idea about where to go for help or what to do.

Many medical students in similar straits

In June, staff at the Palestinian Medical Forum at the IUG suddenly realized that there were 73 students whose accumulated unpaid tuition totaled $150,000 and who had been notified of this shocking and unwelcome reality.

This happened just one month before graduation. If these students couldn’t pay, they could neither meet their own vocational goals, nor become the doctors so desperately needed to deliver medical services in Gaza’s hospitals.

As a way of helping these students get through this challenging time, the Palestinian Medical Forum reached out to local resources. Initially, however, this brought in only the paltry sum of $500.

With this failure behind them, Omar and some others set up an online donation page, linking it to a number of sites that would help publicize the fundraising effort, and making clear that they were from a legitimate student organization with the laudable goal of helping other students succeed. To their joy, this effort turned out not to be futile!  The response was overwhelming. In addition, the fundraising organizers searched online to find as many additional humanitarian organizations that could help in providing funding.

Their campaign was launched on various social media websites. They also sent emails to existing contacts from around the world and launched a twitter campaign under the hashtag #DonateToGraduate, on which some of the medical students who were struggling so hard with their finances shared their personal stories.

The campaign ended with them having raised the astonishing sum of $45,000, from 496 donors from places all around the world. Furthermore, during the very last days of the campaign, an organization in South Africa, Gift for Givers, invited some of the Palestinian medical students to share their stories during a video conference. Gift for Givers then donated an additional $71, 000 ensuring that no senior student had to fear not graduating because of an inability to pay.

Although the affected students were able to graduate, the event for them happened after the regular graduation of the rest of the students who hadn’t been dependent on this help from outside. So, Omar arranged for a special graduation party. It was a huge surprise and a wonderful blessing in recognition of the amazing hard work everyone had done.

Two new doctors for Gaza

Thanks to the campaign, the two students I’ve reported on here, Ahmad and Tahani, were able to pay their tuition and to graduate, a blessing and a miracle that had arrived just when they nearly had lost their last hope. I hope you will rejoice with them and share their stories with others.

At the beginning, Ahmad hadn’t felt optimistic about his tuition somehow being paid, and he had been afraid to harbor even a slight glimmer of hope. But when his tuition had miraculously been provided, he told me it felt as though a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders. For him, it was then (and still feels like) a miracle; it looks that way to me, too.

Ahmad deeply hopes that the campaign’s contributors will continue supporting education in Palestine, thus helping both those students who need financial support and the medical system that so desperately needs doctors.

As for Tahani, this experience was like a flame of hope in the dark tunnel of her life. She had spent nights praying to achieve her goal and this campaign had been her only hope.

When the campaign hadn’t initially reached its goal, and she found herself unable to pay her fees, Tahani turned to her mom, and the two of them had together fallen into a quagmire of worry and anxiety.

Then, unexpectedly, the miracle occurred! The campaign raised enough money to help. Tahani graduated on time, and even had a wonderful graduation party (with the bonus of her being able to get herself a new a outfit in which to celebrate).

Tahani was so excited the night before the big event she couldn’t sleep, and even now she can hardly believe that she has actually, successfully, graduated.

I will always hold dear the memory of the moment when she shared her good news with me, smiling broadly, and talking about two highlights. The first was receiving flowers from her special person, Aseel. The second was the loving, tear-filled and immensely proud look in her parents’ eyes as they beheld their beloved “Dr. Tahani Samara.”

With all the bad news that comes constantly from Gaza, it feels so wonderful to be able to share this good news story.