Alsama Project - Lebanon

In Arabic, "Alsama" means "the sky" - and that is precisely what this extraordinary organisation offers the refugee teenagers of Lebanon: limitless horizons in a world that has tried to close every door against them.

Founded in 2020 by Kadria Hussien, Mohammad Kheir, Meike Ziervogel and Richard Verity, Alsama Project began as a single room with 40 girls learning literacy. When those students demanded a full education, a movement was born. Today, Alsama educates 1,100 refugee teenagers across four centres in Shatila and Bourj al-Barajneh Refugee Camps in Beirut and one centre in Homs, Syria- with almost 900 more teenagers on the waiting list. Remarkably, 87% of Alsama's staff come from the local or refugee community, making it genuinely refugee-led.

The context is stark: in Lebanon, 85% of Syrian refugees cannot attend school, and fewer than 2% of Syrian displaced youth finish secondary education. Alsama's answer is a radical, accelerated curriculum that compresses 12 years of schooling into 6, taking students from illiteracy to university-readiness. Literacy is achieved in just 6 months. All centres are WASC-accredited - making Alsama the only refugee education centres globally to hold this international recognition, and giving students their first internationally recognised transcripts.

The awards speak for themselves: the 2024 US Library of Congress International Literacy Prize, the 2025 Ockenden International Prize, and the 2025 TIAW World of Difference Award for CEO Meike Ziervogel, recognising her contribution to women's economic empowerment.

Alsama's resilience was tested in 2024 and earlier this year when war engulfed Beirut. As students fled to Syria and others were displaced, Alsama became one of the only education providers in Lebanon not to miss a single day of teaching - pivoting overnight to WhatsApp lessons, fundraising for SIM cards, and opening mini-schools in displacement shelters.

The impact extends far beyond the classroom: 99% of enrolled girls avoid early marriage against a national rate of 35% for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon, and 97% of boys avoid child labour against a national rate of 30%. Cricket sits at the heart of Alsama's culture, with 23 hubs where boys and girls train together - 55% of players are girls - offering dignified paid work to older students and disrupting harmful gender norms. Weekly yoga, awareness classes, and full-time psychologists support holistic wellbeing.

Students are already winning: scholarships pledged to Alsama students by the Universities of Cambridge, Leicester and Arizona State; the 2025 World Historian Essay Competition; and the Ambassador for a Day competition. The first cohort graduates in July 2026.

Alsama's vision now stretches to Homs, Syria, where 14 years of conflict have destroyed over 8,000 schools. The Global Schools Prize would help open a second centre, expanding Alsama's proven model and offering a generation of returning teenagers the sky they were promised.