OXFORD, London -- Kinan and Louwai Muhammed never imagined that war would break out in Syria. Born in Britain to Syrian parents, the two brothers travelled back to Syria almost every year to visit friends and family.
“It was such a stable, beautiful place,” says Kinan, 31. “An amazing place for us to go and visit.”
Then, in 2011, everything changed and their yearly visits stopped. “We felt so detached from it," says Louwai, 26. “All we could do was watch.”
Now into its sixth year, the civil war in Syria has forced some 11 million people to leave their homes, while approximately 220,000 have been killed. Despite Russia’s promised withdrawal and ongoing peace talks in Geneva, there is no end to the conflict in sight. And with much of the country torn apart, Syria’s once robust institutions have been badly hit.
“Syria had one of the best healthcare systems in the region,” explains Kinan. “Now it’s been set back I don’t know how many years.”
In Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, a report from Physicians for Human Rights showed that 95% of doctors have fled or been killed. Education too has suffered badly. According to the United Nations, by 2014, about a quarter of Syrian schools had been destroyed.
“Resources are a massive issue,” says Kinan. “So many teachers have left or just can’t function as they used to.”
With universities underfunded and overstretched, training the next generation of Syrian doctors is in jeopardy.
It’s something Ahmad, 22, a fifth year medical student in Syria, understands all too well.
“During the crisis, vast numbers of students and tutors have had to migrate,” he said via email, asking that his last name and location not be revealed for security reasons.
“Our university used to have multiple cooperations with German universities that allowed German tutors to come and teach us here in Syria. But unfortunately, the co-operations fell apart after the crisis.”
As medical students themselves, it’s a situation that both Kinan and Louwai found particularly concerning: Kinan, who studied medicine at Imperial College London, is currently studying a DPhil in neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Louwai, who studied pre-clinical medicine at Cambridge and clinical medicine at Oxford, has recently been awarded a Kennedy Scholarship to study a Masters in education at Harvard.
“We were watching the news and speaking to friends and family, and we just thought, what can we do to help?” says Kinan.
Early last year, the duo set up SyriaScholar, an online platform offering medical students in Syria teaching from academics in the UK. Their hope is to offer support to underfunded and understaffed universities, and provide some of the academic opportunities they've had in the UK.
“I’ve been given an amazing opportunity to be born in a place where you can have access to the best education and healthcare in the world," says Kinan. "The least I can do is give a bit of that knowledge to people that need it most.”
Modeled on the Oxbridge tutorial system, SyriaScholar gives small groups of students direct one-on-one interaction with tutors.
“They were asking questions that medical students ask all the time,” says Louwai. “Without someone to explain them to you, it can take so much longer to learn.”
The brothers used available, open-source software to build the website, which includes a platform for video-conferencing, allowing them to run the two-way tutorials online as well as upload powerpoint presentations that the students can follow during the tutorials. The lessons are also recorded.
They made initial contact with students through friends and family, and the program has since been spread by word of mouth. Currently, they are working with students from Al-Andalus University for Medical Sciences in the city of Qadmus, as well as Tishreen University in Latakia, and they're hoping to expand the program to Damascus University.
As Internet connections at these universities are unreliable, most of the time, groups of five or six students get together at Internet cafes, huddling around a computer to participate in tutorials. Attendance varies, but the brothers say around 40 students so far have participated.
“They’re exceptional students,” says Kinan. “They want to become the best doctors they can be.”
Currently, the teaching is provided by Kinan and Louwai themselves, although they’ve had offers from tutors at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College and University College London to participate in the program as well. They’re also hoping to provide guest lectures from big names in UK academia.
The tutorial sessions, given in English, provide students like Ahmad with a level of practical, personalised teaching that their own universities simply could not provide right now.
“The information from lectures we have had from SyriaScholar, like how to read an [electrocardiogram] or chest X-rays, gave us knowledge that was missed out by our lecturers here,” he said.
Although the civil war is an ever-present reality for the students, both brothers stress that SyriaScholar “has absolutely nothing to do with religion or politics,” says Kinan. “It’s purely about medical students who want to become doctors.”
“There has to be a time of peace. There has to be an end,” says Kinan.
“Syria used to have an amazing medical system. These are the students that will help rebuild it.”
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Topics Social Good
