Hassan Alkhawan, a former SRC ESOL student, has been awarded ‘The Prince’s Trust Young Achiever of the Year' award at the recent Pride of Britain Awards!
The former Syrian fled his home country and moved to Northern Ireland along with his family in September 2017 seeking a better life. Shortly after arriving (two months to be exact!), he enrolled on the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) course at Lurgan campus. When Hassan started the course, he had little to no English and believes SRC was the initial building block to his successful career.
Hassan Alkhawam won the Prince's Trust Young Achiever award.
Hassan has since devoted his life to helping other vulnerable families and has gone on to co-found NI Hyatt - an organisation that helps other refugees integrate - which has earned him the award, which he received at a glittering weekend celebration at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel.
Hassan is very grateful for the excellent learning environment he encountered when he started at the College, so much so, that other family members including both parents have also undertaken ESOL courses! Hassan would like to thank his lecturer Andrew Porterfield in particular, who was an excellent mentor from day one and always encouraged Hassan to do his best! He said, “Throughout my time at SRC, I felt supported and the course allowed me to meet people from different backgrounds who had similar needs to me.”
Hassan is currently a second-year student at Queen's University Belfast studying Software Engineering and hopes to one day enter the cyber security field. He is extremely passionate about continuing to grow NI Hyatt and help as many refugees as possible here in NI.
For anyone thinking about studying ESOL at SRC, Hassan’s advice would be to “Go for it and if you always try your best, you will get there!”
To find out more about our ESOL courses, please click here.