A Lebanese organisation providing an schooling lifeline to younger refugees in its homeland and Syria is able to improve its life-changing assist after successful the $500,000 first prize in a contest run by the UAE-based Varkey Basis.
The Alsama Venture, which has 4 academic centres in refugee camps in Beirut and a fifth in Homs in Syria, is trying to open two extra centres after being chosen for the inaugural International Colleges Prize.
The group was named the winner throughout the International Schooling Discussion board in London, with the award being offered by Sunny Varkey, the prize’s founder, and Richard Curtis, a famend screenwriter and movie producer.
Even throughout the conflicts that hit Lebanon in 2024 and 2026, the Alsama Venture continued to show its college students day by day.
Opening up entry to schooling
Meike Ziervogel, chief government and co-founder of the Alsama Venture, advised The Nationwide that the organisation was “extremely honoured” to have gained the prize.
“Half 1,000,000 {dollars} will enable us to open extra schooling centres in Lebanon and Syria,” she mentioned. “That can allow tons of of illiterate youngsters to achieve college entry inside the subsequent six years.
“I feel what actually impressed the judges is that we’re really having an affect with younger people who find themselves usually completely uncared for by so many organisations, by so many governments.”
There are about 1,200 pupils on the organisation’s academic centres within the Shatila and Bourj Al Barajneh Refugee Camps in Beirut, the place 40,000 Syrian and Palestinian refugees stay, and in Homs. About 85 per cent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are unable to go to high school.
9 out of 10 pupils who be a part of as 13 or 14-year-olds can not learn, write or perform fundamental numerical duties, however an accelerated curriculum signifies that inside six months they’ve change into literate and capable of rely. In six years – half so long as it usually takes – they’re able to attend college
Ms Ziervogel, a novelist and writer, helped arrange the Alsama Venture after shifting together with her husband from London to Beirut in 2018, with the intention of spending a 12 months working with Syrian refugees in Beirut.
In Beirut she met Kadria Hussein, a Syrian refugee, and so they started educating literacy to ladies within the Shatila refugee camp. Many of those ladies, nonetheless of their mid-teens, have been already engaged to be married.
These efforts to enhance literacy and numeracy grew, in 2020, into the Alsama Venture, which educates girls and boys. The undertaking additionally organises sports activities matches, notably cricket, and highlights the significance of gender equality.
The primary consumption of pupils is now graduating from their schooling centres and, in some instances, are set to attend famend universities overseas on full scholarships.
Altering lives
“All of those ladies, they might say, ‘If Alsama hadn’t given us this chance, we’d by now be married.’ Most would most likely have two or three kids,” Ms Ziervogel mentioned.
“The boys would’ve began working, amassing plastic from age 4 onwards. After they come to us, their trajectory, they might at all times need to do very troublesome jobs.”
Ms Ziervogel mentioned many younger individuals within the refugee camps in Lebanon stay in “excessive poverty”. Based on printed figures, 58 per cent of the 660,000 Syrian refugee kids in Lebanon have by no means gone to high school.
If they’re again in Syria, many are in areas which have suffered extreme destruction. About 8,000 colleges within the nation are mentioned to have been destroyed.
“Typically the prolonged household share a small room,” Ms Ziervogel added. “They’re usually victims of home violence, baby labour, baby marriage.
“Nobody sends them to high school. It’s usually they who come and are completely self-driven … They see the chance and seize it.”
Investing sooner or later
The funds from the International Colleges Prize will enable the Alsama Venture to open two extra centres and run them for a 12 months, Ms Ziervogel mentioned.
“We’ll have to lift extra money for continuity,” she mentioned. “Our major precept is to say to our college students, ‘If you happen to decide to us, we’ll decide to you.’ We’ve been working diligently to have a widespread funder base.”
This month the Alsama Venture was awarded $50,000 after being named because the International Colleges Prize’s winner of the Overcoming Adversity prize, considered one of 10 classes, from which the general winner was chosen.
“I used to be illiterate in a method that I noticed every little thing round me, however I felt I used to be blind,” mentioned Maram Alkhoder, 19, from the village of Deir Ezzor in Syria, who has lately accomplished her schooling with the Alsama Venture on the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut after arriving in Lebanon in 2016.
“At any time when anyone requested me a query, I felt very ashamed of who I used to be – a woman who couldn’t reply, a woman who was shy, a woman who was truly in a nook, a physique and not using a soul.”
Ms Alkhoder mentioned the founders of the Alsama Venture listened to the women’ need to be educated and, inside a year-and-a-half, she was capable of converse some English and will learn and write. Now she hopes to review worldwide relations at college and want to change into a diplomat.
“I would like the world to learn about my village, to provide them the chance of labor … The one factor they need is the chance,” she mentioned.
Daring to dream
Louay Alkadro, 19, who arrived in Lebanon in 2017 after his household fled Raqqa in Syria, has additionally simply accomplished his schooling at one of many organisation’s centres on the Shatila refugee camp.
He hopes to review advertising at college overseas if he can acquire a scholarship, which he mentioned could be preferable to his possible different of amassing plastic for 12 to 14 hours a day.
“I’m graduating after affected by conflict in Syria, from ISIS, from witnessing two wars in Lebanon … To have fun my commencement, I feel it’s going to be a giant second for me and for my household, who have been with me for this journey,” he mentioned.
“ … I’m persevering with to search out some sponsors, some scholarships, so I can go and obtain my dream.”
Mr Alkadro mentioned the organisation additionally helped him to see the significance of gender equality.
The International Colleges Prize attracted about 3,000 functions and nominations from 113 nations.
In addition to the International Colleges Prize, the Varkey Basis additionally helps the International Trainer Prize and the International Pupil Prize.
Energy of schooling
Mr Varkey, the founding father of the Varkey Basis, the International Colleges Prize and Gems Schooling, supplied his “large congratulations” to the Alsama Venture.
“Your extraordinary achievement demonstrates the transformative energy of faculties, innovation in opposition to the percentages, braveness below disaster, and an unshakeable perception in each baby’s potential,” he mentioned.
“Your work has created life-changing alternatives for youngsters excluded from schooling, whereas strengthening whole communities.”
Mr Varkey mentioned he hoped that recognition of the Alsama Venture’s achievements would “encourage a world motion to scale one of the best concepts in schooling”.
