Cairo, Egypt — September 24, 2016 — Sharing his vision and expertise in addressing educational challenges and barriers facing Syrian refugee children, Hatem Sallam, CEO of ITWORX Education, led a presentation titled “Children in Distress: Back to School”, at the V-Millennium@EDU Sustainable Education meeting. Hosted at the Microsoft Technology Center at NYC Times Square, the meeting aimed to reinforce cooperation between partners and to focus on three main drivers of sustainable development: education, monitoring and technology.
Alongside the 71st session of the UN General Assembly, a special Refugee@EDU session was held on September 23rd, as part of a series of events co-organized with the UNESCO Institute for IT in Education, for business leaders to engage their influence and ingenuity towards advancing solutions that meet the educational needs of refugee children across the globe.
As one of the leading sector thinkers, Sallam discussed how creative solutions that tap into technology can advance efforts to help the world’s out-of-school children receive quality education.
Commenting, Sallam said:
“At ITWORX Education, we believe that every child has the right to an education, which acts as the foundation for building their capacity, expanding their horizon, pursuing professional careers and becoming constructive members of their communities. 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 inevitably become a burden on their host countries, rather than active contributors in their communities.”
He added: “The V-Millennium@EDU meeting was an ideal platform for thought leaders and organizations in the field of education, including ITWORX Education and GBC-Education, to devise initiatives and come up with non-traditional solutions to overcome those obstacles and prevent the catastrophic consequences of having an entire out-of-school generation as well as reconstruct a post-conflict Syria.”
In 2015, ITWORX Education ran a pilot project based on its e-learning platform WinjiGo, at Saad Nayel School in a refugee camp in Lebanon, bringing blended learning to the camp and engaging community stakeholders. A second pilot took place earlier this month at Sultan Mohammed Al-Fateh School in Turkey; Syrian students and school teachers shared an innovative e-learning experience with WinjiGo. The pilot demonstrated that school capacity can be increased by 50% with minimal cost and without the need for additional teachers or facilities.
During the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, the Education Cannot Wait fund was announced with the aim of providing quality education to millions of children in crisis situations. The private sector GBC-Education coalition, of which ITWORX Education is a member, also announced the mobilization of $100M to support the fund during the summit.
ITWORX Education solutions have broad market potential to achieve the company’s endeavor in transforming underprivileged societies around the world and effectively helping them do more with less. The solutions can be applied to children in distress due to armed conflict or other natural disasters.
