The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA), the country's leading state-run development aid agency, supports Syrian students studying in Mexico. TİKA, which already offers aid to Syrian refugee communities around the world, has repaired and refurnished a center for students in Aguascalientes.
The agency coordinated with the Habesha Project, a Mexican nonprofit organization founded in 2014 to help Syrian university students whose studies were disrupted because of ongoing civil war in Syria. The organization brought students from war-torn Syria to Mexico where they attend prestigious universities. TİKA renovated a center where students stay and study and supplied it with education materials. Speaking at a ceremony for the reopening of the center, Habesha Project President Adrian Melendez hailed Turkey's stance on humanitarian issues related to international crises and thanked the country for their generosity to Syrian students in Mexico.
Habesha, which takes its name from a different pronunciation of Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia where the first community of Muslims took shelter in order to escape persecution in Mecca, focuses on the education of Syrian students with promising futures. Students are picked from among the displaced Syrians to attend Spanish classes courtesy of Habesha and can apply for Mexican universities.
