Excerpts from Hassan’s written story:

“My story begins less than an year before I was born on September 10, 1987. My parents got married on November 9, 1986. Then a month later my parents came to Houston, Texas, from Erbil “Hawler” Iraq-Kurdistan. My parents came from Kurdistan to Texas avoiding Saddam Hussein’s regime, a regime that resulted in the assignation my aunt, uncle and cousins on both side. Saddam’s use of chemical warfare against the Kurds and Iraq’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, had not only harmed my family’s life but many others. In addition, they came to America with a dream that when I came onto this earth, I would succeed. I am Kurdish-American and born as a United States Citizen. At 5 years of age my parents became US citizens and we settled into my hometown of Richardson, Texas…

Doing the AmeriCorps program this past year, I was privileged to prevent the students to drop-out from school and keep youth focused on getting an education and preparing for the world of work, and keeps low-income children from across the San Antonio huge Hispanic population highly distressed neighborhoods achieve life success through hard work, determination and opportunities to excel made me proud coming from a Kurdish America background and making this children having wonderful dreams later in life after high school and college.”