Jordanian NGO pairs with English-speaking students to provide education for local children

IRBID — English-speaking students of Qasid Institute, in Amman, woke up bright and early on Saturday to board a bus travelling north to Irbid, for the final session of an eight-week-long English education programme for children of local Jordanian and Syrian families.

It was graduation day for the local students who had worked so hard throughout the past two months to learn English.

The programme, started by the Family and Childhood Protection Society NGO, pairs Western students studying at Qasid with children aged 6 to 15 that live in the area. The children often come from homes that are dealing with instability due to domestic issues of one sort or another. 

This organisation is one of many NGOs that have sprung up across Jordan to provide services, in response to Jordan’s population growth and the mass influx of refugees and migrants over the past decade. 

Fadi Dawaghreh, director of programmes at the society, noted that “the programme has been very successful and we think both the volunteers and the students are learning. We started with 25 kids and now we have 60 kids”.

When asked about the experience of having Syrian refugees take part in their programme and what he expects for the future, he said that “we think they will need at least three years to go back. They lost their house and everything; so some even wonder why they would go back to Syria when they have no schools there. Their children grew up here in Jordan as many came here in 2012 with children that were only four or five years old”.

“The community is very supportive of the centre and the work we are doing,” he added. 

Umayma Alshammari and Ruba Abuhijlih, teachers at Qasid Institute from Irbid and Zarqa, are prime examples of the buy-in that the community has shown for this sort of programme. When asked to help find students from Qasid that were willing to donate their Saturdays to teach English, they jumped at the opportunity.

“At first, it was a bit difficult getting students to volunteer, but this semester we had 50 students that signed up to teach, but we could only accept 25 of them. We work with the volunteers to help them develop lesson plans and sometimes come to the centre to see how the teaching is going,” Abuhijlih said.

Taylor Giordullo, a Qasid student from the US, is a strong proponent of the programme: “I would recommend this programme to people. They do a good job of organising and getting the kids here. The director and staff have been very grateful to us as well and have created a warm environment for teacher-volunteers.” 

Alex Bannerman, a Qasid student from Great Britain, who teaches beginner courses, added that “the kids are great, always keen to learn and they really work hard. It is also great to see that there are other volunteers that are willing to spend their own free time to help, they are giving up one of their two days off every weekend to help these children”.

“We want to thank you very much. We learned so much more than we expected,” one local student stood up and said as they were receiving their graduation certificates on Saturday.