Education offers the best chance for refugee youth to both improve their own lives and improve wellbeing across their communities. The unfortunate reality is that continued education is an inaccessible luxury for most. We risk losing an entire generation of young people to futures crippled by poor access to learning opportunities.
With this knowledge, in 2018, H.E. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, Emirati businessman and philanthropist created a 120 million AED (32.6M USD) fund to support 20,000 refugees and vulnerable youth to access secondary, vocational and tertiary education. The Fund, awarded over three years, supports high impact education programs in Jordan and Lebanon. In the UAE, the Fund benefits Arab children of families, who due to wars and disasters temporarily reside in the UAE.
H.E. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair’s decision to support refugee education is based on the alarming statistics showing the increasing gaps and challenges facing these young people. Almost 3 million Syrian refugees have sought refuge in Jordan and Lebanon, in addition to the almost 2.2 million (in Jordan) and 450,000 (in Lebanon) Palestinian refugees who have been living there for decades (UNRWA 2019). More than half of Syrian refugees are children and youth. Completion of secondary education by refugees (1.4% in Lebanon, 4.8% in Jordan) (Pathways to and Beyond Education for Refugee Youth in Jordan and Lebanon AGFE) has remained extremely low since the beginning of the conflict. In both Lebanon and Jordan, almost 45% of the 657,000 school aged refugees are out of school (UNHCR 2020) with the vast majority of these being at the secondary school level (KIdsRights 2018). The enrolment rate of Syrian refugees in post-secondary education is also extremely low; 1.6% in vocational education and under 5% in tertiary education (Pathways to and Beyond Education for Refugee Youth in Jordan and Lebanon AGFE).
The Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair Refugee Education Fund is administered by the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education (AGFE). The fund awards grants based on a competitive selection process to organisations working directly with refugee and conflict-affected children and youth in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Jordan. The fund has taken an impact-driven approach, and values a partnership model, working closely to build capacities of partners based on emerging needs from the ground.
