George and Amal Clooney have committed to helping Syrian refugee children get their education in Lebanon!
The couple’s foundation, The Clooney Foundation for Justice , is collaborating with Google and HP to support UNICEF, and the Lebanese ministry of education to open seven “second shift” schools for these kids (afternoon classes). With a collective $3.25 million donation from the three organizations, this project will help to pay for transportation, school supplies, computers, content, curriculum and teacher training for 3,000 currently out-of-school refugee students! These classes will be exclusive to Syrian kids to help them not only get up to speed with the other Lebanese children, but also to help them deal with their internal turmoil from their trauma.
“Thousands of young Syrian refugees are at risk — the risk of never being a productive part of society. Formal education can help change that,” George and Amal said in a statement. “That’s our goal with this initiative. We don’t want to lose an entire generation because they had the bad luck of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Currently, over 200,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are out of school. This program will thankfully help a small portion of them, but hopefully more is done to help these children pursue education from other organizations and companies. Kudos to George, Amal and their foundation for lending a hand!
Imperfectly B 