The Rev. Saleem Ghubril<\/p>\n
The numbers put up by The Pittsburgh Promise <\/a>over the last 13 years are astounding: to date, the organization has funded higher education for 10,635 students, helping them attend 142 institutions by raising more than $160 million in scholarships. Students are awarded $5,000 in scholarships annually for their four years of post-secondary education, with a series of support systems in place to make sure they\u2019re grounded even as they study toward securing a credential.<\/p>\n The Pittsburgh Promise\u2019s founding director, the Rev. Saleem Ghubril<\/a>, was the guest Wednesday of the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty on Leading Theologically, a Facebook Live broadcast put on twice each month by the Theological Education Fund of the \uc7a5\ub85c\uad50 \uc7ac\ub2e8<\/a>. Watch their conversation \uc5ec\uae30<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ghubril told Hinson-Hasty the story of his harrowing departure from Lebanon, where he was born and lived the first 16 years of his life. In the early months of that nation\u2019s civil war, his brother was kidnapped and then returned, his family\u2019s home was bombed, and \u201cour family took some casualties.\u201d One night his father, an accountant at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, woke Ghubril and his brother up and told his sons, \u201cWe\u2019re leaving.\u201d The family was sneaked into the convoy being used to evacuate American citizens and left their war-ravaged country.<\/p>\n Ghubril recalled the first prayer he\u2019d ever uttered a few months before the war broke out, two years before that sudden departure: \u201cGod, I want my life to count.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI had a lot of peers and friends and some family members whose lives were cut short,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t longevity I prayed for, but fruitfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n He and his family settled in Iowa City, Iowa, where he was thrown out of the first high school and college he attended. \u201cThroughout the dumb season of my life when I was making stupid choices, there were caring adults in my life who gave me multiple, multiple, multiple second chances,\u201d he told Hinson-Hasty.<\/p>\n Thus the \u201cGod, I want my life to count\u201d prayer \u201cremains my consistent prayer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He may not know each of the 10,635 Pittsburgh Promise scholars, \u201cbut I do know several hundred of them, some quite well,\u201d Ghubril said. \u201cI have officiated the weddings of four of them and I look forward to baptizing their children if the opportunity comes up.\u201d<\/p>\n Ghubril said he was privileged to speak during the funeral of another Pittsburgh Presbyterian pastor, Fred Rogers. He also counts Dr. John M. Perkins<\/a>, the 91-year-old pastor and civil rights leader from Mississippi, as a mentor and friend.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s been a champion of racial healing in Jackson and Mississippi and across the country,\u201d Ghubril said. \u201cHe is the absolute champion of faith and community development converging into one stream.\u201d<\/p>\n