Story By: Juan Mayes, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Golder’s News And Sport
Liverpool superstar Mo Salah has become the first Ambassador for a United Nations digital education programme which helps offer education to refugees and communities across Africa.
Egyptian superstar Salah, 27, became the Ambassador for digital education programme Instant Network schools.
The programme aims to offer quality education to some of the most needed communities of the African continent by connecting refugees, host-communities and teachers to digital content and the internet to help improve their education.
The United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) and Foundation Vodafone founded the programme in 2013 as they aim to expand it across the continent.
UNHCR report the programme has thus far helped 86,500 students and 1,000 teachers in 36 schools across eight refugee camps.
The schools are located in sub-Saharan Africa in the countries of Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
Salah spoke with local media and said his partnership is to help “close the gap between the education available to refugees and their peers living in settled communities.”
The striker calls the Instant Network Schools programme “an important initiative” which he is “proud to represent” as it will “transforming learning for a generation of young people”.
The UNHCR and Vodafone Foundation have jointly invested 26 million EUR (22 million GBP) to help expand the programme.
The expansion aims to reach 500,000 refugees, 10,000 teachers and to have 255 new Instant Network Schools by 2025 with 20 already set for this year.
Salah will visit some of the schools assisted by the programme and hopes to raise awareness on the importance of education and helping refugees receive lessons that can help better their future.
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