Rizan Hajji Mohamed bundled his pregnant wife into a car and drove from Los Angeles to Indianapolis because an online search identified only one program that grants high school diplomas to adults. The Syrian refugee arrived in a snowstorm, the first he’d ever seen.
But Mohamed, now 42, was no stranger to desperate treks across the miles. He fled Aleppo, Syria, because the Bashar al-Assad regime was persecuting Kurds like him who advocated for political freedom. He landed in Lebanon in 2007 and lived at a refugee camp, eking out a living in the industry he’d formerly owned a business in—embroidery design.
Warned that the intelligence agencies of Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria were trying to kill him for his human rights advocacy in Lebanon, he fled again. The United States granted him political asylum and flew Mohamed and his wife to Los Angeles in 2012.
Once they arrived in Indianapolis, he enrolled in a tuition-free Excel Center to get the high school degree he’d been denied in Syria. At the same time, he applied for dozens of jobs with no luck until he found a furniture company willing to hire him.
“It was a nightmare—at the first place, I said the warehouse isn’t for me,” Mohamed said. “When a second furniture company sent me to the warehouse, I said yes.”
He worked 60 hours a week, learned English, and earned his diploma.
“The Excel Center was great—it changed my life,” he said. “When I applied to another company with my diploma, instead of the warehouse, they made me a salesman.”
He grabbed the opportunity, but he wasn’t done with his education. With a steady salary, he enrolled first at Ivy Tech Community College, then Indiana University Indianapolis. He graduated with a biology degree in May.
Betsy Delgado, chief mission and education officer at Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana, said Mohamed is a sterling example of why Goodwill opened The Excel Center in 2010. After starting with a single charter school in Indianapolis that year, the second-chance school for adults, filling a glaring need, has grown to 41 locations serving more than 12,000 students across seven states. The goal is to double in size by 2030.
Delgado said a key factor in the school’s fundraising and rapid expansion has been a partnership with Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities — an ND economics research lab that conducts scientific evaluations that identify programs that are effective at reducing poverty — and it's rigorous analysis of how people with a diploma can get better jobs and pay than those with a GED alone.
