MONROE, Wis. — A Green County community is rallying around a former exchange student endangered by the Israel-Hamas war.

Anastasia Yacoub was a student in the 2022-23 school year at Monroe High School. She was the school’s first Palestinian exchange student.

Katie Lehto is a science teacher at the high school. She’s also the advisor for the Junior Optimists Club, a volunteer group Yacoub was in.

“I think sometimes she did find it challenging here to properly explain and describe what it was like for her back at home, and have people here understand,” Lehto said.

Toward the end of last school year, her apartment building was bombed by Israeli forces.

“It was destroyed,” Lehto said. “The entire wall was gone off of her apartment. The upstairs neighbors, several of their family members died.”

As decades-long conflict turned to war, alarm bells went off for Lehto.

“She’s 17, she’s a child,” Lehto said. “Having seen her smile and heard her laugh, and talk about life… this kid is running around, scared and unsure of whether she’s going to make it through the day.”

The Yacoub family left Gaza in November. They’re now refugees in Jordan. Yacoub can’t go to school because of regulations there.

Monroe High School students and staff stepped up to support the Yacoubs. The Equity 4 Everyone group at the high school started a GoFundMe fundraiser for the family.

“It’s really beautiful to watch,” said senior and member of Equity 4 Everyone James Wahl. “It’s one of my favorite things about Monroe, is watching the community come together.” 

Meanwhile, Lehto is trying her best to get Yacoub a new student visa to come back to America. Because she’d already been issued a student visa, it’s been a complex process with lots of back and forth.

“It’s a lot of emailing and questions and conversations, but it’s the least I can do,” Lehto said.

Equity 4 Everyone’s GoFundMe is closed. You can find a new one Yacoub set up here.