Alsama Project - 2026 Global Schools Prize Winner

• Lebanon's Alsama Project was announced as the winner of the inaugural Global Schools Prize at the Education World Forum in London, 19 May 2026 by award-winning filmmaker, campaigner, and fundraiser Richard Curtis, receiving $500,000 to scale its impact. 

• The Alsama Project is one of Lebanon’s only education providers to have maintained daily teaching throughout the 2024 and 2026 conflicts, operating education centres in refugee camps serving more than 1,100 displaced teenagers excluded from traditional schooling. 

• Alsama Project ("the sky") educates refugee teenagers in Lebanon and Syria, taking students from illiteracy to university-readiness in just 6 years. Born in 2020 when 40 girls demanded a real education, it is now 96% refugee-led and the only WASC-accredited refugee school system worldwide.

Founded in 2020 to empower 40 teenagers in Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp, Alsama Project has since grown into a pioneering education organisation serving more than 1,100 displaced young people. Where many refugee education programmes focus on younger children, Alsama focuses on adolescents – who are often overlooked and trapped in ill-suited systems.

Alsama, which means ‘sky’ in Arabic, is driven by the communities it serves: 72% of staff are refugees, 96% come from refugee or local communities, and most senior leaders have refugee backgrounds. It operates four education centres in Shatila and Bourj al-Barajneh Refugee Camps in Beirut – which are each home to 40,000 refugees from Syria and Palestine – and one centre in Homs, Syria. In Lebanon, 85% of Syrian refugees cannot attend school, and fewer than 2% of Syrian displaced youth finish secondary education. In Syria, 8,000 schools have been destroyed by conflict.

Against this backdrop, Alsama has developed an accelerated education model specifically designed for teenagers whose learning has been disrupted by war, displacement, and poverty. Ninety percent of students arrive unable to read, write, or perform basic numeracy. Through Alsama’s curriculum, students learn to read, write, and count within six months and can progress to university in only six years – half the length of a traditional education pathway. Its curriculum is tailored to students’ real-life contexts, enabling them to learn from their own experiences. For example, beginners learn Arabic reading by reading road signs or numeracy by planning a weekly grocery budget at the market. Alsama’s first cohort will graduate in July, and students have secured scholarships to the University of Cambridge, the University of Leicester, and Arizona State University.

Each Alsama education centre also includes trauma-informed safeguarding and psychosocial support, with full-time psychologists, dedicated centre supervisors, and weekly awareness classes covering students’ rights, healthy relationships, gender equality, and personal safety. The organisation also works directly with families and communities to intervene when children are at risk of early marriage, child labour, or abuse.

As a result, Alsama has helped prevent 256 girls from early marriage, kept 278 boys out of child labour, supported 66 students experiencing domestic or sexual abuse, and reached hundreds of parents through community awareness programmes that have helped shift attitudes around education, gender equality, and child protection. Ninety-eight percent of students report feeling safe at school, an extraordinary figure in communities where violence, instability, and trauma are daily realities. 

In 2024, and again earlier this year, as bombs fell across Beirut, many of Alsama’s students fled to Syria and were displaced. And yet, it was one of Lebanon’s only education providers to continue teaching uninterrupted. Teachers moved immediately to online learning, emergency fundraising provided SIM cards so students could stay connected, and temporary classrooms were established in displacement shelters.

A defining part of Alsama’s model is cricket, which has become a powerful tool for leadership, wellbeing, and social change. Across more than 20 cricket hubs, boys and girls train together, building teamwork, discipline, and confidence. Half of Alsama’s cricket coaches are girls, challenging gender norms and creating visible leadership role models for younger students. Older students are employed as junior coaches, librarians, and teachers, giving them safe income opportunities that reduce the economic pressures that can force children into labour or push girls toward early marriage. 

Alsama now plans to use the prize funds to open a second accelerated learning centre in Homs, Syria. Classes will include Arabic, English, maths, science, IT, financial literacy, professionalism, and rights-based awareness sessions, as well as yoga and cricket.