Be inspired by Nunjeen Mustafa’s incredible journey

12 December 2018

Be inspired by Nujeen Mustafa’s incredible journey and ambition in this short film by National Geographic.

Nujeen gave a talk at TEDxExeter 2017 in which she shared her extraordinary experience of escaping war torn Syria. Nujeen Mustafa has cerebral palsy and cannot walk. This did not stop her braving inconceivable odds to travel in her wheelchair from Syria in search of a new life. Sharing her story, Nujeen recounts the details of her childhood and disability, as well as her harrowing journey across the Mediterranean to Greece and finally to Germany to seek an education and the medical treatment she needs.

Trapped in a fifth floor apartment in Aleppo and unable to go to school, she taught herself to speak English by watching US television. As civil war broke out around them, Nujeen and her family fled first to her native Kobane, then Turkey before they joined thousands of displaced persons in a journey to Europe and asylum. She wanted to come to Europe, she said, to become an astronaut, to meet the Queen and to learn how to walk.

In her strong, positive voice, Nujeen tells the story of what it is really like to be a refugee, to have grown up in a dictatorship only for your life to be blighted by war; to have left a beloved homeland to become dependent on others. It is the story of our times told through the incredible bravery of one remarkable girl determined to keep smiling.

Nujeen’s story has already touched millions and in her book written with Christina Lamb, she helps to put a human face on an ongoing global emergency.