This text is part of the special section Philanthropy
Marianne Araj, Jean-Philippe Sicard and Nadira Hajjar all received scholarships from the Arbor Foundation, which allowed them to pursue their studies without too much financial stress. We met them.
A buoy in the sea
When Marianne Araj discovers the existence of the Arbor Foundation, the management master’s student at the University of Montreal is at her wit’s end. In addition to the normal difficulties that a student, who is moreover an immigrant, can encounter, she experiences the very unusual situation of caring for her aging parents, in particular her sick mother, in a country she does not know. ” I am an only child. I had to accompany them to their medical appointments, to follow-ups. The stock market got me out of misery. »
At 26, this native of Aleppo in Syria has already lived two lives. A medical student, she was injured by shrapnel in 2014, and her mother then sent her to study in Paris. His parents, for their part, fled the country a few years later. They settled in Montreal following in the footsteps of his father’s cousins — who had learned French while studying with the Marist Brothers. But Marianne, who is completing a degree in biology at the University of Paris-Est Créteil, will only be able to join them in 2019 after overcoming enormous administrative difficulties.
“This scholarship is much more than money. There is mentoring, moral support, networking. It is very valuable. My trials had seriously affected me, and I lacked self-confidence. »
Marianne Araj is now a clinical analyst at the CHU Sainte-Justine, responsible for the implementation of “Panda”, short for PandaWebRx, software for managing all drug and non-drug prescriptions. Thanks to her, “we get out – a little – of the paper! »
The Veteran Fellow
Jean-Philippe Sicard is one of the former scholarship holders of the Arbor Foundation: his goes back to his years of master’s studies in 2008-2009 at the École de technologie supérieure (ETS).
“Mr. Arbor was still alive at the time, and I met him,” says the 38-year-old engineer, who is CEO of Ton Équipier, a consulting firm in the marketing of innovative products. “I was a good student, but I did it a bit mechanically, without a clear direction. Mr. Arbor confirmed my choice. A scholarship like that is a big pat on the back. »
Even if obtaining the master’s degree is not a condition of the scholarship, he admits that he blames himself for having thrown in the towel after two sessions. “I felt the need to work too much,” says the engineer. “But all the same, the company that I founded in 2017 with Sébastien Bibeau corresponds exactly to my master’s project, which was project management in innovation. »
Ton Équipier, which brings together six employees, helps very small, innovative SMEs commercialize and market their product. “Our clients are hyper-specialized entrepreneurs who are passionate about developing a product, but hate marketing. So we put together a marketing plan for them and we execute it with them. »
After only five years of existence, Ton Équipier has managed more than 270 projects with a hundred very varied clients in aviation, human resources, finance, design and even the municipal sector. In the spirit of the Foundation, Jean-Philippe Sicard is now contributing to the education system. At the ETS Centech incubator, he gave several workshops to groups of 20, 30 or 40 student-entrepreneurs. And he now teaches as a lecturer at the University of Sherbrooke. “The cause of education is close to my heart. »
The passion for studies
Nadira Hajjar doesn’t know how she could have completed her MBA at the Université de Sherbrooke in 2015 without the Arbor Foundation scholarship. The founder of FlipNpik, a visibility software for local businesses, has had an eclectic career, which has seen her go from literature to MBA passing through molecular biology and pharmaceutical sciences.
“I come from a family that valued studies enormously”, says the one who arrived from Lebanon at the age of 18 in the early 2000s. “I immediately found myself in the system here. It gave me opportunities that I would never have had in Lebanon. »
This is where the Arbor Foundation comes in, with a scholarship that will allow him to get through this very demanding MBA year, which is also his tenth year of university studies. “With 11 classes per session, it went very quickly. I was enormously in debt, and it was impossible for me to work under these conditions. I had the line of credit filled to the maximum. »
The idea for her business came to her while she was working as a team. “We were examining the difficulties of small businesses to advertise themselves on web platforms, which are all poorly adapted. We’ve found that one of the problems kids have is that they don’t have time to create content. So we offer them to create content for them through consumers, who are rewarded for doing so. This is the idea behind FlipNpik. »
After four years of development, the company was ready to launch commercialization in 2020, just as COVID hit. “The pandemic delayed us, but here we go. »