-
Getting Gaza’s children off to a “Right Start” at school this year with IRUSA and ANERA
Laura McAdams is International Programs Coordinator at Islamic Relief USA. Back-to-school season is approaching and while many parents are preparing themselves for their children’s first day of school, only about a third of all four and five year olds in Gaza will be enrolled in preschool in the fall. The preschools that are available to children in Gaza are overcrowded and expensive: There are only four public, no-fee preschools in all of the West Bank and Gaza. Moreover, the quality of education children receive at these schools is reportedly poor. During school hours children have neither the opportunities or materials to be creative. They don’t even have places to play…
-
TechGirls Are Tech-Social for Humanitarian Action at Islamic Relief USA
Nada Shawish is communications specialist at Islamic Relief USA. Fatima and Khadija are scrolling through their phones, checking tweets and Facebook statuses during a short break. “I am addicted to social media,” Fatima exclaims, her big eyes growing even bigger. She’s fifteen years old from Lebanon and she tells me that she dreams about working in digital technology someday. The girls are visiting Islamic Relief USA headquarters as part of the job-shadowing aspect of the TechGirls exchange program. TechGirls is a 3-week, international summer exchange program hosted by the U.S. State Department that selects promising girls from the Middle East and North Africa region and empowers them to to pursue…
-
Positive Community Centers Invigorate Inner City Youth in Addis Ababa
Nada Shawish, Communications Specialist at Islamic Relief USA, reports from Ethiopia. Graduating from higher education is a great accomplishment and should be a milestone for a young person. But like many of my friends in the United States who were not able to get jobs after graduation during the last economic downturn, youth in Ethiopia have had to deal with this reality since they were born. Tawfiq Dandeir is 24 years old and he worked hard to get his education. But like many other students, there were no jobs to be found when he was done. When he got the opportunity to become manager of the Lidita Youth Center in…
-
IRUSA Makes Education for Syrian Children a Priority
Enas was nine years old when her and her family fled Syria more than a year ago in January 2014. Their home is now a simple tent in eastern Lebanon in one of the more than four hundred informal settlements that are scattered throughout the country.
