APEAL is proud to announce that its second fundraising event helped provide scholarship opportunities towards the education of six well-deserving art students.

APEAL has many objectives, however, the immediate one is to support education, facilitate access to culture, by granting scholarships to promising talents, because we believe that it is indeed through education, knowledge and cultural exchange that we will overcome inequalities, achieve a better understanding and surmount all our differences.

Four of the six students were present at the ceremony, and below are their speeches.

Sarah Haddad ALBA

I would like to thank APEAL for encouraging young talents and offering its help to art students to complete their education and studies especially that many parents do not appreciate the importance of art and do not offer the necessary support. A special thank you also to the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, University of Balamand that offers an empowerment platform and all the professors that provide the necessary conditions for students to grow their potentials, namely, dean Andre Bekhazi and Mrs. Nicole Harfouche who strive to assist students in attaining their goals.

I am pleased to provide you with a synopsis of my artistic achievements during the course of the past year, and to say, again, that Sarah Haddad, whom you helped last year, has developed more self-confidence, more confidence in her artistic techniques, and aspires to gain more knowledge, which would allow her to achieve her ambitions is many fields.

In the past year, I had the opportunity to work on many subjects, such as old buildings that have a special Lebanese cachet, and that are town down with no hesitation. I have also worked on the behavior of youth vis-à-vis their parents, who are sometimes sent to nursing homes and forgotten. Last but not least, one of my subjects was the various characters of our ALBA professors. I used cartoons, painting and photography development.

Finally, I would like once again to thank APEAL for its continuous efforts in deploying activities to fulfill its human and national mission.

Maya Saadeh AUB

I thank APEAL and the sponsors who offered me financial support to continue my art education. Moreover, I thank the Fine Art and Art History department in AUB who supported my artistic talent. After I graduate, my goal is to pursue a Masters degree in Fine Art. Reflecting stuttering and possibly music in my artwork is my major aim. I’m not ashamed of my speech disability. On the contrary, this disability will make me and my artwork stronger and will always remind me that surrendering is not an option.

Mark Makhlouf USEK

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Members of university administration and faculty, APEAL scholarship donors and recipients,

It is a great pleasure for me to meet with you here today. My name is Mark Makhlouf, student at the USEK University; I am graduating next year with a degree in Graphic Design thanks to the APEAL scholarship.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to USEK which made me the person I am today. And I really want to thank the APEAL Scholarship Program from the bottom of my heart since the scholarship is very helpful. Though like any person I would like to believe that I am special and gifted by my own, I cannot underestimate the role of the university in my formation and individuality. It is here that I understood the value of academic success and the importance of one's skills development. I want to contribute my talents with the community; I want to become a part of the working environment.

When I received the scholarship I did not only feel proud to be part of such a concept, but a sense of responsibility arose by offering tomorrow the best I can. This scholarship will push me to work even harder and will give me more time to concentrate on my future studies. I look into the eyes of my fellow scholarship recipients, and I see the ambition and the passion we will all pursue.

Finally, all I can humbly say is thank you for the faith you put in me and on my work. I will do my best to become even better than I am now.

Muriel Bejani USJ

The scholarship I was granted is a powerful sign: a sign of recognition, a chance, a chance that allows me finally to fulfill a dream I always had, a career in arts.

At eighteen, I chose to enroll in psychomotricity, in order to master a discipline in which I excelled: dance. Meanwhile, driven by a growing curiosity for everything that relates to arts, I also enrolled in literature. After four years of studies and two years of research, both of my passions (dance and literature) amalgamated, and it was this fusion that allowed me to work on the report of the act of writing with the dance movement in my master’s thesis.  Then, another center of interest emerged and found its little way through; I started working on painting and calligraphy.

Now, new horizons are opening up, I can proudly say that I belong to the artistic world, and am not merely a spectator or amateur, my ambition is to create tools that make accessible the vocabulary world and the contemporary art field to as much people as possible.

My motivation: because art should be accessible to all, and not remain restrained in a closed minority, we are after all in the twenty first century, and I firmly believe that schools should play an important role in deploying arts, and shaping tomorrow’s youth.

This conviction drives me to work directing my efforts to a specific audience: children, our future citizens, training them in analysis, critical thinking, research and creativity…to the freedom of thought that is intrinsically linked to culture.