SCHOLARSHIP

in Columbus from Syria largely unable to communicate with teachers and fellow students. “I just sat there and listened,” she said, lonely and stressed and wondering about friends at her old school, where shockwaves from a bomb had shattered the windows.

“The irony is that the first book we read in class here was ‘The Odyssey,’’’ Sara said.

By the end of her first year at Centennial High School, she was on the honor roll and on her way to speaking English almost as fluently as her native Arabic.

Now 17 and headed to college, Sara is an accomplished poet with plans to study international relations and politics and to work through the United Nations. “I feel a responsibility to start over strongly,” she said. “And I really believe in making a difference.”

Sara is one of five Ohio high school graduates being honored today by the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio. The Beat the Odds scholarship program awards a $ 5,000 scholarship, laptop computer and leadership development opportunities to students who have excelled in school, overcome significant hardships and given back to their communities.

The event “is so moving and inspiring,” said Pam Kreber, the advocacy agency’s interim executive director. “It’s the young people and how they come across. Their stories just resonate with people.”

This is the fifth year for the Ohio ceremony, which will take place at the Westin Columbus and is to feature a keynote speech from Marian Wright Edelman, president of the national

Children’s Defense Fund.

Recipients have navigated enormous challenge and heartbreak. Collectively they have faced the deaths of parents, the loss of homes, poverty, sexual assault, foster care and the chaos of households consumed by drug addiction.

And the teens have answered, Kreber said, with perseverance and strength. “Hardship and adversity come in all shapes and sizes,” she said. “We had more applicants this year than ever — well over 100 from throughout the state. It makes it that much harder to choose.”

The other winners are Teneeyah Hale of Northland High School, Terrell Johnson of Eastmoor Academy in Columbus, Abigail Huffman of Cambridge High School in eastern Ohio and Ciara Scott of Washington Park ESA in Cleveland.

Sara’s mom, Razan Oueis, said she is in awe of her daughter’s accomplishments. “I don’t want her to be under pressure, but she is so determined,” Oueis said. “At her age, I was still playing with toys.”

As the civil war in Syria worsened, Sara — always a bright and serious child — grew up quickly. Continuing to go to school, even as some families started keeping their sons and daughters at home, seemed like the most heroic thing she could do.

Oueis, because of her position as an educator at a Damascus university, was a target for kidnapping and violence. She maneuvered multiple checkpoints daily.

“I have a friend, she passed away last week,” said Oueis, 42, an Arabiclanguage instructor at Columbus State Community College. “She was a doctor. There was no food, she was ill. Here, we have to be thankful for every moment.”

Oueis had a path to Columbus because other family members had come here years before. She is divorced from Sara’s father, who made it out of Syria but apparently was in poor health and died in Egypt.

“A lot of my friends lost their dads,” Sara said.

She likes America even as she sometimes feels that America is unsure about her. Although her high school on the Northwest Side is diverse, there aren’t many other Muslim students, Sara said.

She has pushed back against discrimination and stereotypes, engaging — or correcting — peers and teachers. She’s also a slam poet, eager to tackle social and political issues, and she told her story on the TedxColumbus stage earlier this year.

“I’m very opinionated,” Sara said. “I’m not afraid to speak.”

She plans to attend Denison University in Granville, choosing it over other highranking liberal- arts schools because she doesn’t want to be far from her mother and grandmother. The concept of home is both beloved and frustrating for the family; Sara’s grandparents left Palestine for Syria after the establishment of Israel.

Oueis believes that her daughter will thrive no matter where she goes.

“I think I might be the only girl at Denison wearing a head scarf,” Sara said.

That’s OK, her mother said. “If you don’t go there and do it and be the first, then somebody braver will,” Oueis said. “You are the same, only you have a scarf. A very beautiful scarf.”