Israa is a Syrian child in Lebanon with a speaking impairment. Thanks to the Back to the Future program she is taking on it, also with the distant learning program "I learn from home".
Zahra is a young mother from Syria. She left her home country in 2013 when she was 21 years old and sought refuge in Lebanon. Here she met Rami, they got merried and now they live with their four children in Sidon, the third-largest city in Lebanon located in the South Governorate.
Two years ago, Zhara discovered that her youngest daughter Israa (now 4 years old) sustains a speaking impairment which identified her as a student with special needs. She got the chance to know the “Back to the Future program” from their surrounding community and AVSI’s community liaison staff. In December 2019 Israa started attending the Back to the Future center at the Al Moasat Institute.
She participated to speech and occupational therapy sessions* and to Community Based Early Childhood Education activity (CB-ECE) with with her sister Khadija (5 years old) until the Lebanese government declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus spread, end of February 2020.
Since May 2020 the project have adopted a remote distant learning program in collaboration with Seenaryo organization ‘’I Learn From Home’’; where caregivers are reached routinely with interactive educational lessons through the different WhatsApp groups, in order to support and help provide education for their children.
The two siblings started attending distant classes since May, in addition to one to one remote educational support by an AVSI inclusion officer. The girls have shown remarkable improvements through remote learning, and they are regularly applying the workbook exercises; sometimes without the mothers’ help.
When we asked Zahra what was the change that she noticed she replied: “Before I found out about your program my daughters used to spend most of their time doing nothing but watching TV. After they started coming to the Back to the Future center their lives changed, they became motivated and interested, it gave them the opportunity of meeting a lot of friends. Currently in this distance learning, their progress is noticeable: Israa started to pronounce few letters which were difficult to pronounce before; on the other hand Khadija was very shy and would barely participate nor speak to her classmates and the teacher. With the remote learning Khadija is showing a lot of interest, enthusiasm and character”.