A project that I led trained 58 Arab reporters to write about education. The project was supported by one of a handful of grants awarded by the UN Democracy Fund from an applicant pool of more than a thousand applicants. Many of the journalists who attended the workshops still write about education today.
Four conferences that I and my colleagues from Al-Fanar Media organized in Istanbul, Amman, and New York from 2015 to 2016 focused the conversation about refugee education during the height of the Syrian conflict. The meetings also helped connect international donors with local expertise, local universities, and nongovernmental organizations working with refugees.
I won six years of support for journalism that spotlighted the work of Arab researchers, who often face difficult conditions and have little institutional support. Al-Fanar Media covered both researchers’ discoveries and the obstacles they need to overcome.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the Arab region had long resisted online education in any form. I led the editorial team at Al-Fanar Media to produce in-depth coverage that revealed how the pandemic hurt the education of the most vulnerable youth, including the poor, those in conflict zones, and girls in socially conservative families.
