With the closure of all private and public schools in Lebanon since March 2nd, over a million students are at home and missing precious education opportunities. While some schools are sending homework and parents are doing their best to support their children, many are finding it difficult to cope.
Indeed, nothing can replace an educator’s experience and expertise. Thankfully, the creativity and resourcefulness of Lebanese social enterprises provide our students with some great options to follow the curriculum at their own pace.
For students of KG1, KG2, KG3 as well as grades 6, 7and 8, Tabshoura is a digital education platform developed by the Lebanese Alternative Learning (LAL) association to offer free quality education anytime anywhere and in three languages. Tabshoura programs follow a curricular approach that is aligned with the Lebanese official curriculum and learning outcomes and validated by the Ministry of Education. It applies an innovative methodology based on active learning and a discovery approach and enhances analytical and autonomous learning skills.
Today, on
Tabshoura.com you can find 3 programs:
-
Tabshoura
Kindergarten: provides programs for early childhood designed for learning reading, math and sciences in English, French and Arabic (KG1, KG2, KG3 with 450 activities)
-
Tabshoura
Middle School: provides programs for middle school from grade 6 to grade 9 aligned with the learning objectives of the Lebanese curriculum and validated by CERD experts. (More than 320 units/chapter)
-
Tabshoura
Plus: provides diverse learning tracks in arts, environment, civic awareness, learning disabilities, problem-solving and more (100 units)
Tabshoura programs also exist in an offline box from which 30 devices can connect without internet access, as a solution to internet unreliability in parts of Lebanon.
Since their launch five years ago, Tabshoura has already benefited more than 2000 students and trained 50 teachers. They have also welcomed Malala and Tim Cooke in Lebanon as part of their partnership with the Malala Fund.
In January 2020, LAL started getting the funding and management support of Alfanar venture philanthropy to scale their impact, optimize their organisation and ensure their sustainability by digitizing content of other educational institutions
MMKN
For public school students in Grades 8 and 9, MMKN association offers Remote Academic Support Sessions on WhatsApp with their volunteer tutors who come from major universities across Lebanon and are trained by MMKN. Each session is dedicated to a single subject which includes Math, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. Volunteer tutors propose a weekly schedule that gives students a structured alternative while also allowing students to ask questions. Public School administrators have to enroll to the program first, in order to give access to their students to use MMKN free-of-charge services.
For the past 10 years, MMKN has been providing tutoring support to Grades 8 and 9 and have built partnerships with more than 100 public schools, supporting more than 10,000 students and achieving a 95% pass rate at the brevet official exam, thanks to the incredible dedication of more than 1260 university volunteers.
These impactful social enterprises are part of Alfanar portfolio, the first venture philanthropy organization in the Arab region that provides funding, management support, training and mentor-ship to social enterprises focused on education, job creation and women empowerment.