“It gave me hope in life.”

A gifted student with a will of steel, Mohammad was only 16 years old when he fled Iran by boat, landing in immigration detention on Christmas Island. After his release, and even before he enrolled to finish high school in Australia, he knew what he wanted to do next.

“I wanted to go to university and I always knew that if you really want something, you have to work hard for it, speak it into existence and show it through your actions and the universe will manifest it for you, even when the path seems out of reach,” he says. 

But as a young man in a new country, thousands of miles away from his loved ones, making that dream a reality wasn’t something Mohammad could do on his own. It wasn’t until he applied for the UTS Humanitarian Scholarship that the pieces began to fall into place.

The scholarship covers tuition and other fees for successful asylum seeker and refugee students. To date, it has supported 36 students to complete a university qualification, but back then, Mohammad was among the first. 

He enrolled in a Bachelor of Engineering and threw himself into the joys of learning. Through the scholarship’s mentorship program, he was also introduced to Brad Chan, a UTS graduate, Ambassador and businessman who gave him not only academic and professional advice but became his family in Australia. 

“It gave me hope in life,” he says of the scholarship. “If I wasn’t going to university, I didn’t have any Plan B’s.”

Today, Mohammad is paying that hope forward to countless others. After a few years spent working as a civil engineer, he founded TQN Personnel, a social enterprise that helps humanitarian entrants to Australia find work in the construction sector. 

He’s also a donor to the Humanitarian Scholarship and provides mentoring support to other students who are following in his footsteps. For Mohammad, who donated half of his first-ever Australian paycheck back to UTS, being able to help others who have travelled similar journeys is a full-circle moment.