Sharing his vision to address the challenges of Syrian refugee children, Hatem Sallam, CEO of ITWORX Education, held a presentation called “Children in Distress: Back to School” at the V-Millennium@EDU Sustainable Education meeting.
The meeting was held at the Microsoft Technology Center at NYC Times Square. A special Refugee@EDU session was held as one of a series of events co-organized with the UNESCO Institute for IT in Education, The meetings aimed to get business leaders to use their influence to bring forth solutions to meet the educational needs of refugee children around the world.
“At ITWORX Education, we believe that every child has the right to an education, which acts as the foundation for building their capacity, pursuing professional careers and becoming constructive members of their communities,” Sallam said. “Unfortunately, there are numerous challenges standing between Syrian refugees and realizing that vision. Young refugees are at risk of child labor, early marriage and other forms of exploitation and if those threats are not addressed effectively and promptly, they will be left on the march to poverty and will become a burden on their host countries, rather than active contributors in their communities.”
In 2015, ITWORX Education launched a pilot project based on its e-learning platform WinjiGo at a school in a refugee camp in Lebanon. A second pilot project happened this month at Sultan Mohammed Al-Fateh School in Turkey, in which Syrian students and school teachers shared an innovative e-learning experience with WinjiGo. The project demonstrated that school capacity can be increased by 50 percent with minimal cost and without extra teachers.
During the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, the Education Cannot Wait fund was launched to provide quality education to millions of children in crisis situations. The private sector GBC-Education coalition, of which ITWORX Education is a member, also announced $100 million in financial support for the fund during this summit.
