Yemeni Teacher Opens Home to 700 Students
A Yemeni teacher has given up an important part of his life to improve education in a country where civil war has raged since 2015. He turned his home into a school that now serves hundreds of students.
Adel al-Shurihi said schools in his area began closing when the war started. He and other parents had nowhere to send their children. It also was not safe for the children to be on the streets.
Al-Shurihi wanted to provide some form of education for students, so he turned his three-level home into a school.
Al-Shurihi said that within the first year of opening his school, 500 boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 15 signed up for classes. Today, he gets about 700 students daily.
He has 13 classrooms and 16 volunteer teachers. He doesn't have many materials usually found in schools, such as books, paper, and chalkboards, and most students have to sit on the ground. But Al-Shurihi said this has not stopped his students from trying to get an education.
Sherin Varkey helps lead the United Nations children’s agency, or UNICEF, in Yemen. He said the war is likely to have serious long-term effects on the country. Children who do not receive an education are at greater risk of ending up in child labor, joining armed groups, or marrying at a young age. Currently, about two million Yemeni children are not able to go to school.
Earlier this year, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the war the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 20 million in need of aid.
