SETU Lecturer to run Berlin Marathon to help Gazan students
Dr Méabh Savage, SETU.
A lecturer at South East Technological University (SETU) is running 26 miles across Berlin to help Palestinian students from Gaza.
Dr Méabh Savage is a staff member, researcher and lecturer at SETU and is part of the on-campus group Gather for Palestine.
As of early September 2025, nearly 64,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023.
Dr Savage will be running the Berlin Marathon on September 21 to help raise funds for Palestinian students studying in SETU as part of the Gaza Scholarship Initiative (GSI) and who are recipients of SETU’s Sanctuary Scholarship Scheme (SSS).
She has set up an online fundraiser for her run, with the funds going to help students who are coming to Ireland under the scholarship initiative.
According to Dr Savage, four Gazan students are currently attending SETU though the SSS, two more recently arriving from Gaza in collaboration with the GSI.
The money will help these students who have survived nearly two years of death, destruction and displacement by Israeli military.
Dr Méabh noted: "The students are in a really difficult space emotionally & psychologically as you can imagine, to have reached safety, but to know that their loved ones are starving.
She wrote further: "As a strong advocate of education as a tool for social justice and in response to the dire need to support people in Gaza, I am using this opportunity of running the marathon in Berlin to fund raise some funds which can be used to provide the students with support for additional costs that are not covered by current funding on their arrival in Ireland.
"The funds will be shared by me with the Gather for Palestine group who will distribute it to the students to help with the cost of clothes, food, books etc."
At time of publishing, over €1,000 had been raised out of the €1,300 target.
