Our Affiliate: Al Muntaha Tutoring
A Message from Al Muntaha…
When the pandemic struck, the world turned inwards. As we were being told to isolate ourselves and cut off contact with even our dearest friends and family, it became increasingly difficult to care about those we have not met, and with whom we normally struggle to empathise. Unfortunately, as this level of attention became scarcer, it also became more necessary.
Al Muntaha Tutoring was founded in March of 2020 upon the publication of a UNICEF report estimating that over 100 million schoolchildren in the Middle East and North Africa were not in school due to COVID-19. At first, the organisation strove to be a vital source of education for children in the weeks and months during which they were no longer in school. However, as children sporadically returned to school and demand for the service continued to grow regardless, Al Muntaha followed the tide by forfeiting its role as an emergency school for the role of a consistent, post-pandemic presence in its students’ lives.
We have since leaned into a strategy of offering supplementary education. There are many definitions for supplementary education floating around the internet, but we would categorise any student-driven, passion-focused learning environment as a supplementary educational experience. The vast majority of our students take one lesson each week with us, taught one-to-one by the same university student or professional teacher who has volunteered to tutor for at least four months. We don’t prescribe a strict curriculum––our tutors are instead encouraged to cater to each child while designing their lesson plans, taking into account their students’ passions, stress, mood, and curiosities. Unconventionally, a tutor could begin a lesson with a mathematics quiz and find themselves drawing flowers with their student by the end of the hour. In supplementary education, a student needs a certain sense of autonomy to engage with the learning process, and delegating control to the student over what they learn encourages them to develop passions that will interest them outside of school, and even when the laptop screen is shut. Cultivating deep passions, which supplementary education is conducive to, can instil a lifelong love of learning in a child, a disposition with a compounding nature that will reward them later on in life.
Today, Al Muntaha serves over 150 students living in the Middle East and North Africa, all taking weekly one-to-one lessons with university students and professional teachers who volunteer as tutors. Our students range in age from five to seventeen years old, and partnerships with organisations like AMIDEAST have allowed us to reach children in even the most underserved parts of the region like the Gaza Strip. Partnerships with like- minded charities, volunteer centres, and university societies have also allowed us to recruit tutors from top global universities, including Oxford, Imperial College, the University of Toronto, and the University of Michigan.
The generous support of the Amjad and Suha Bseisu Foundation has enabled us to work towards building and normalising the Middle East and North Africa’s supplementary education infrastructure. While we have identified this as a critical gap in the region’s education system, supplementary education is only as effective as the foundational education underlying it. It is essential that NGOs, activist groups, and regional governments work to provide consistent and rigorous education to all school-aged children in the region, and that organisations like Al Muntaha come in to provide supplementary education that recognises and empowers each student as an individual learner.
More information about Al Muntaha can be found here on their website.