My story begins on Detroit’s east side, where my Iraqi Christian family rebuilt life after fleeing Baghdad. At thirteen I juggled two realities: mixing cement to help with rent and translating eviction notices because my parents could not read English. A decade of night shifts and bus rides heavy with borrowed textbooks has brought me here—holding a 3.97 GPA at Oakland Community College and an acceptance letter to transfer into Michigan State University’s computer engineering program. Yet each semester’s bill still feels like holding my breath. Direct Relief, Immediate Focus Because my grassroots‑organizer contract ended in April, every credit hour is weighed against groceries and my parents’ mortgage. This $1,000 award would pay for an entire three‑credit upper‑division course plus books, letting me remain enrolled full‑time instead of dropping to part‑time status. Staying full time keeps my transfer timeline intact, preserves the merit aid that requires continuous enrollment, and protects my student health insurance. Time Reinvested in Community Hours not spent chasing gig work will go into scaling the trilingual voter‑engagement database I built last fall. It registered 5,000 immigrant Michiganders in English, Neo‑Aramaic, and Arabic; with dedicated development time I can adapt the tool for statewide nonprofits before the 2026 midterms, amplifying voices long silenced by language barriers. Academic Acceleration The scholarship will also fund compute credits and dataset licensing for my honors thesis—training a Neo‑Aramaic speech‑to‑text model so elderly refugees can complete digital state forms by voice. Early prototypes show 91 % accuracy; pushing beyond 95 % would make Michigan the first state to pilot assistive technology for this endangered dialect. Ripple Effect on Future Careers Finishing my bachelor’s on schedule positions me for a 2026 co‑op with a Detroit robotics start‑up focused on assistive devices. Long‑term, I will launch a social‑impact engineering firm that hires refugee youth and reinvests ten percent of revenue into STEM stipends for undocumented students. Your investment bridges the gap between community‑college grit and a research university’s resources, accelerating the moment I start reinvesting in others. In short, the Sherwood Family Scholarship converts stress into fuel: tuition relief becomes study hours, study hours become community tools, and those tools become ladders for the next generation of Michigan students who, like me, refuse to let circumstance dictate destiny. Thank you for considering an applicant committed to turning a single award into a statewide engine of equity. My dream aligns with my goals in life to make sure no one has to ever go through what I have been through. Thank you for your carful consideration.

The problem I cannot stop thinking about is invisibility—specifically, how language and technology barriers erase the voices of refugee and immigrant families in America. I first felt its weight the winter our new life in Detroit shattered. My oldest brother opened the front door to an armed robber; the man pressed a gun against my mother’s pregnant belly and demanded our savings. My brother and I crouched beneath the kitchen table, too young to fight, too new to English to call for help. The robber left with everything we owned, but the deeper theft was silence: no police report, no counseling, no neighborhood meeting—because no one in my family could describe what happened in the language that ruled our city. That night crystallized a mission I have carried from Baghdad’s mortar‑lit skies to my current computer‑science classroom: build tools that turn isolation into connection so no child translates terror in the dark. At twelve I taught myself HTML on a donated desktop and realized code is a borderless dialect—an instruction set that never asks for a passport. By eighteen I was mapping out database schemas during lunch breaks from construction jobs, determined to make data serve the people who fill out forms in three different alphabets. Fast‑forward to last spring. Our Chaldean Catholic parishes wanted to boost voter turnout but lacked a way to track outreach across English, Neo‑Aramaic, and Arabic. I designed a trilingual database with an SMS interface that let volunteers log conversations and schedule reminders in real time. Over eight weeks—while carrying a 3.97 GPA—I registered more than 5,000 parishioners, many of whom had fled regimes where voting meant risking your life. When a grandmother pressed her ink‑stained thumb into my hand and said, “Now my voice counts,” I knew this was the problem I am destined to solve. My obsession fuels every line of code I write. In class, I turn daunting projects into collaborative sprints, ensuring no student fails alone. In my community, I prototype translation apps that read utility bills aloud and resource dashboards that show immigrants where to find legal aid within two taps. Long‑term, I plan to launch a social‑impact tech firm in Detroit that hires refugee youth and open‑sources tools for nonprofits nationwide. Ten percent of future revenue will fund stipends for undocumented high‑school students to take AP Computer Science so the next generation of innovators emerges from the very neighborhoods that once tested me. Winning the S3G Advisors NextGen Scholarship would do more than ease tuition for a first‑generation, BIPOC student at a Midwest state school—it would accelerate a mission already in motion. Your investment would free the hours I now spend chasing gig work to instead refine my honors research on low‑resource dialects, complete a machine‑learning certificate, and scale my civic‑tech prototypes beyond Michigan. Every dollar becomes thousands of lines of code that translate fear into agency. I cannot erase the moment a gun threatened my mother, but I can code a world where language never robs a family of its voice again—and that is the problem I am obsessed with solving.

Mortar rounds chased my family out of Baghdad; survival eclipsed everything, including my father’s dream of education. Detroit’s east side promised refuge, yet terror followed us there. One winter night my oldest brother answered a knock; an armed robber barged in, pistol leveled at my mother’s pregnant belly. My brother and I dove beneath the kitchen table, paralyzed as the man snatched the envelope that held our entire life savings—money we had already lost and rebuilt more than once. Powerlessness branded me that night; I vowed to one day to wield tools stronger than fear. Those tools arrived in the form of a creaky Pentium donated by a local church. Between mixing cement for rent and translating eviction notices for my Neo‑Aramaic‑speaking parents, twelve‑year‑old me taught myself HTML from a discarded library book. Watching three lines of code bloom into a webpage felt like reclaiming control over a life defined by chaos. Detroit then forged fascination into discipline. I lugged borrowed textbooks onto city buses, devoured free MOOCs after double shifts, and now sustain a 3.97 GPA in Computer Science. When an advanced SQL capstone overwhelmed my cohort, I organized nightly marathons, built a shared Git repository, and rotated peer‑teaching roles until every student understood every trigger. Our professor now distributes our project as the class model—proof that leadership is measured by how many rise with you. Beyond campus I use code to widen civic doors. Last spring I created a trilingual database and SMS tool that registered 5,000 immigrant parishioners in eight weeks—neighbors who once believed a ballot could invite bullets. The program halved follow‑up time and will be open‑sourced before the next election, demonstrating that algorithms can fortify democracy. My dream is to convert that ethos into a social‑impact tech firm in Detroit, hiring refugee youth to engineer translation apps, resource dashboards, and predictive health tools. Within five years I plan to reinvest ten percent of revenue into stipends for undocumented teens taking AP Computer Science. This scholarship would rescue my full‑time enrollment after the abrupt loss of my organizer income, freeing the hours now consumed by gig work and allowing me to complete honors research on low‑resource dialects. Your investment will echo far beyond my tuition: every line of community‑driven code I write will be a line of defense against the helplessness I felt under that kitchen table, transforming trauma into technology that shields and uplifts others.