Let’s Help Asmaa Get Her Study Visa for Germany!

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am writing to you today about Asmaa Gharib, a passionate and strong woman from Egypt who wants to pursue a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the Free University of Berlin.

Asmaa comes from a small city in the Suez Canal region of Egypt. Against the will of her family and after many struggles with them, she moved to Cairo in 2016 seeking her right to learn and live independently. As a woman from a middle-class background and with a very humble governmental education with no privilege or connection except her passion, her journey was not easy at all. She fought fiercely for her right to choose her life. She struggled and worked hard on herself until she achieved stability in her financial and professional life.

Asmaa grew passionate about gender, culture and film in the Middle East region. She developed a career in culture, gender and feminist studies. She devoted herself to fighting gender and social discrimination in all the fields in which she worked.

She spent the last four years trying to deepen her knowledge. She got accepted in six master’s programs in the UK and Netherlands, Oxford University and Leiden University among them. She was shortlisted for various prestigious scholarships such as Chevening and Erasmus and had to refuse a partial scholarship to study in the UK because of the lack of additional funding. Unfortunately, she was not able to fund any of these master’s degrees.

This year Asmaa was accepted into an MA degree in the Free University of Berlin to study Middle Eastern Studies and we ask for your support to help her achieve her dream.

Asmaa is now 35 years old which lowers her chances to acquire a full scholarship. According to the regulations of the Federal Republic of Germany, a foreign student must prepare a blocked account of at least 11.208 Euros to get a visa to Germany. And with the very bad economic situation in Egypt, the inflation and the huge drop of the Egyptian pound against the dollar, Asmaa's savings significantly decreased. Here, we ask for your support. We're setting an ambitious 7,500 Euro (roughly 8,000$) goal, but any amount can help Asmaa boost her bank account and get her study visa.

It's critical that someone as brilliant, strong, fighter and dedicated as Asmaa is able to access the education that will allow her to continue her career in the culture and gender fields and secure stability, independence and safety for her life, especially in the light of the currently unsafe political and economic situation in Egypt.

Asmaa has gone through an arduous and challenging journey to claim her agency and gain her independence. Let's support her to keep doing that not only for herself but also for other women like her. Supporting Asmaa is necessary because she will use her knowledge to help her community, support women’s rights in the Middle Eastern region, and pursue social justice.

Please consider investing in Asmaa's education; your funds will return dividends in making the region and the world a more just and safe place for all.

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out!

Lucia Carminati

Associate Professor, History of Migration & Modern Middle East History

IAKH: Institute for Archaeology, Conservation and History

University of Oslo