During Ramadan of 2012, Musa and his family packed their belongings and fled their small village in Idlib in search of a safer place. At that point, they were one of the last families to leave. 

As a seven-year-old with little control over his destiny, Musa certainly couldn’t fulfill his dream to conquer the world around him. Thus, when he arrived in Reyhanli, Turkey, he made a compromise and decided to conquer the coding world. His curiosity in coding was born from video games on his computer and a desire to know what was going on behind the screen. Desire turned into action, and he started searching for free online sources to learn more. 

When Musa turned fourteen, he joined Karam House where his older sister had already been taking Innovative Education studios. In addition to the required studios, Musa could pick studios of interest, and of course, Code Jam was his number one choice. 

His passion for coding did not stop at Karam House. Musa reached out to an instructor he had heard about, Mr. Mansour, who teaches online coding classes. He presented his case — that he is a high school student with a huge interest in coding who can’t afford classes — and asked if he could take them for free. And even though Mr. Mansour had just announced that he wasn’t able to take on any more free students, he agreed. 

After finishing all four Code Jam studios at Karam House, Musa asked his mentor if he could create his own Karam coding group. The answer was yes, and Musa began to recruit his friends. Musa is very determined, so it did not take much to invite and convince his friends to join. While they began as a group, the school workload caused many students to leave the group, which is now a team of five.

Musa is still learning different coding languages, and one way he’s putting his knowledge to use is by creating apps. The one he’s most proud of is his Karam project called Gym Coach: “The project is a Windows program designed by Visual Studio 2019 (GUI) and fully programmed using the C++ programming language (CLR). It is a sports program that helps trainers to allocate lessons and exercises to clients in an organized manner and allows them to monitor progress smoothly. It also has some auxiliary features such as a music player and BMI calculation which will help the trainer determine the appropriate exercises.” 

This year, Musa created a new system for borrowing books from Karam House library. The system consists of two parts; one part is an app that the student at Karam House can download to their phones to look up books and find titles they want to borrow. The other part is the admin’s app, which is downloaded onto the library admin’s device to manage the books borrowed. 

Musa came up with the idea to make borrowing easier for both students and supervisors. “This way borrowing is more enjoyable. This system is better than the previous borrowing system which utilized Google Sheets.” 

Mohamad, Musa’s mentor, said that when someone asks him about Musa, one thing comes to mind: “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” He said Musa is one of the top students in the studio, but he doesn’t show it. He is always eager to help his friends who are struggling without making them feel that he’s better or smarter than them. 

When asked to give one piece of advice to someone his age, Musa said, “Follow your goals without any distractions. And always make use of your time, especially when quarantining at home.”