Teach For Lebanon Establishment
Teach For Lebanon is a registered Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) under the Lebanese Ministry of Interior’s decree number 1518 issued on November 5, 2008. After two years of feasibility studies, Teach For Lebanon (TFL) was founded with a clear vision and mission aiming to “eliminate educational inequality while fostering youth leadership and promoting civic engagement.”
Teach For Lebanon has a partnership agreement with of Teach For All, an international network advocating for education equality on the global level. Teach For All’s mandate is to expand educational opportunity internationally by increasing and accelerating the impact of independent social entrepreneurs who enlist their nations’ most promising future leaders in addressing educational needs.
Local organizations are independent entities, supervised by local boards and sustained by an independent funding. Teach For Lebanon, similar to the other members of the network, has a partnership agreement with Teach For All that ensures the sharing of research conducted within each initiative, and the implementation of best practices and lessons learned across the network.
Since its launching, Teach For Lebanon grew to an executive team of five members. The latter is supported by an active Advisory Board and periodically reports to a Board of Trustees, which provides the organization with strategic guidance and ensures the proper execution of the program. The Board of Trustees includes reputable members from the business and academic fields.
About Educational Inequality
Because of high drop-out rates, only 45% of males and 54% of females are currently enrolled in secondary school, according to a UNESCO survey carried out in 2007. Also, there are regional discrepancies. Areas of high educational need typically display the same interlinking factors:
1) Poverty leads to a student mix with a wide range of needs and disadvantages;
2) Existing common practices in educational/educational practices prevent the development of the necessary policies, practices and investments;
3) Schools lack the capacity (talent, financial resources) to compensate for these challenges.
In order to address educational inequality in Lebanon, Teach For Lebanon recruits outstanding Lebanese graduates of all backgrounds who commit to teach for two years in free, rural schools, areas that do not enjoy strong educational opportunities. To sustain and deepen this effort, Teach For Lebanon aims to mobilize a generation of future leaders who will advocate for this cause.
Program Objectives
Teach For Lebanon aims to address the needs mentioned above through a set of clear strategic objectives, as follows:
- Gaining access to a large pool of talented fresh university graduates and civic actors;
- Developing strong relationships within the education sector in Lebanon and the community stakeholders;
- Ensuring quality educational services that will bridge the educational inequality gap in Lebanon;
- Developing a program that will build TFL Fellows’ educational capacity and foster youth leadership skills.