“What does one do with a sociology degree?” In 1992, Maysa Jalbout fielded that question a lot. The Mac undergrad had just spent a year studying commerce, but her heart wasn’t in it – so at the end of her first year she switched her major and decided to take the questions in stride. She graduated with a BA in sociology in 1994 and she’s never looked back. Today, Jalbout is[...]
Maysa Jalbout has spent her career advocating for greater and better support for education, youth and refugees. She has done so through the non-profit sector, government aid and for over a decade in philanthropy. She is currently a member of the IB Board of Governors and is Chief Executive Officer of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education in the United Arab Emirates.[...]
Maysa Jalbout is the founding CEO of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education - a landmark philanthropic initiative with a budget of $1 billion and an ambitious goal of educating 15,000 youth within 10 years. Forbes recognized her as one of the 100 most powerful businesswomen in the Arab world in 2016 and 2017. In her capacity as Non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution[...]
In August, Maysa Jalbout travelled to Nahr El Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon to meet Badriyeh Diab, an 18-year-old Palestinian refugee. An exceptional student, Diab had just received a scholarship from the STEM Scholars program, an initiative by the U.A.E.’s Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education. Jalbout is its CEO. The scholarship allows Diab to pursue undergraduate st[...]
Inadequate access to high-quality schooling in the Arab world has contributed to a widening skills gap that is leaving many young people, even those who have completed school, unemployed and hopeless. But one promising solution offers hope throughout the region: investment in online learning. DUBAI – Education has long been a challenge in the Arab world, with inadequate access to hig[...]
The new CEO of one of the world's largest education foundations -- its size puts it in the same league as the Gates Foundation's commitment to education -- faces these two realities: First, the Middle East has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world. There's a big mismatch between the skills graduates have and the needs of employers. And second, and even more dire: confli[...]
The dominant narrative about Arab youth is deeply worrying. A generation of Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans,Sudanese, and Yemenis are without an education and are losing their futures to intractable conflict. Arabyouth form the largest demographic in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), but rather than beingviewed as a gift to the region, they are seen as a liability. Yet few leaders hav[...]
This week, Arab and international leaders will gather in Jordan for the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Their discussions will centre on how to solve some of the region’s greatest challenges: grave humanitarian crises engulfing conflict-affected countries and their neighbours, wide income and gender inequalities, and growing numbers of unemploy[...]
“The Arab world has made huge progress in giving children access to school,” says Maysa Jalbout, a nonresident fellow with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Yet even so, she calls the 2.6 million Syrian children out of school in the region “perhaps the biggest education crisis globally.” In the podcast, Jalbout—former CEO of the Queen Rania Foundation and a[...]
One minute, one camera, and one boy... is all it took to convey the tragedy of millions of childhoods lost to conflict in the Middle East. Amar’s film is disheartening. But if you walk away demoralized you will have missed the point he makes. Amar is a 15-year-old Syrian refugee, living in Zaatari camp, with a powerful message — children from this region deserve better. He is not s[...]