“Humanity is but a single Brotherhood: so make peace with your Brethren.” - Surah Al-Hujurat I remember my first days at Islamic school. My 5-year old self was dropped off every Saturday & Sunday at the same big building with the strange, tall towers lining the sides. I sat in an old, yet soothing room criss-cross applesauce with a pillow on my legs and a thin Islamic studies book atop the pillow. We’d all eat cheese pizza together for lunch, play in the gym, and correct each other (sometimes annoyingly) when we made mistakes reading the Quran. Eventually, those books got thicker and thicker. As I got older, the atmosphere became more serious as we tackled complex social issues, and my Imam transformed from an authority figure to a mentor. It was only when I started teaching as an assistant instructor, though, that I realized the value of the Muslim perspective. Islam is more than one person - my Muslim faith has influenced me to be a leader by building communities with strong values. For example, a short while after I had started to teach the weekend classes at the Masjid, COVID-19 descended. Teaching Quran and Islamic studies via Zoom certainly wasn’t optimal, but it was the best option Allah gave us. However, as I talked with my students, most of whom were in elementary and middle school, I quickly realized that their primary schools had completely shut down, and they were falling behind academically. Feeling compelled to act, I initiated Connect Me, a free online tutoring nonprofit. Initially aimed at Muslim students, word spread and applications flooded in from all over the nation. Our platform rapidly evolved into a hub of learning, attracting attention from major news outlets like Fox News and USA Today. In 2021, we earned the NBC Making a Difference Award, a testament to our impact – 25,000 tutoring sessions, spanning 33 states and 8 countries, facilitated by our dedicated team of 400+ tutors. While our doors are open to all, I’ve always put extra effort into outreach efforts to reach Muslim students, as it’s Muslims around me that taught me the importance of community values. Connect Me wasn’t my first experience branching out into a new community. I later joined the Turkish American Cultural Association of Michigan (TACAM), co-founding the high school chapter. From there, I got involved on the national level with the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), co-founding the ATAA Youth Committee and representing the 65,000 Turkish Americans across the country as we lobbied in Washington DC. After graduating high school and starting my college education at Stanford, I founded Mosaic Cakes, a food startup that brings Turkish desserts into the American market. When the earthquake hit Turkiye in February 2023, we sold our cakes to fundraise money for relief. My goal is to one day represent Muslim and Turkish interests as a United States Senator. This scholarship would help cover my (unfortunately expensive) college tuition fees so I can achieve this goal. Though we’re thousands of miles apart now, I still call my Imam from time to time. Usually, it’s me asking him for advice as I try to live in liberal California as a practicing Muslim (yikes!). But after writing this essay, our next call’s going to be different. I need to thank him for building such a strong Islamic community foundation around me. I need to thank my family for raising me right. And most importantly, I need to thank Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. Alhamdulillah.