In its third iteration, the Future Skills Project took place from September 2024 to January 2025 in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon with 75 Syrian refugee students between the ages of 14-17. Generously supported by Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair Refugee Education Fund, the project equips young Syrian refugees with 21st-century skills needed for the local and global job market.
“It was a great opportunity to learn how to code. I hope to use this skill to design a game or create something that might help me in the future,” Yousef al-Kadro, a Future Skills Project student, says.
The project comes as a response to record high unemployment in Lebanon, with 47.8% unemployment in 2022. This figure is higher for Syrian nationals, with 55% out of employment and 71.9% of youth not in education, employment, or training. At the same time, however, many companies both in Lebanon and abroad are facing difficulties hiring qualified individuals—indeed, 87% of executives globally grapple with or expect to experience talent gaps in their workforce.
Among the many reasons for this labor market mismatch is that the traditional education system in Lebanon leaves little room for critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration — the very skills in high demand in the modern workforce. Rapid advancements in technology and automation also necessitate a shift toward teaching digital literacy, coding, data analysis, and AI, among others. By neglecting to integrate such skills into their curriculum, schools risk leaving their students unprepared for the evolving job market, hindering their potential for success in an increasingly competitive and technologically driven world.
Honing 21st Century Skills
Our Project focuses on developing future skills in three key areas: beginner and intermediate coding and robotics, critical thinking and problem-solving, and English language proficiency.
The coding and robotics curriculum focuses on project-based learning to teach essential programming skills. Refugee adolescents learn to use block-based coding languages, debug and resolve coding problems, understand the hardware components and sensors of the Microbit platform, engage in basic design thinking and prototyping, and collaborate on group coding projects.
“We learned about critical thinking, how to approach problem-solving, dialogue with others, and logical thinking,” Tahani Al-Mallah, a student with the project, says.
The project’s ultimate goal is to enhance employability, broaden career opportunities, and foster a brighter future for these young individuals and their communities.
“We’ve already had students from the first round of the project get job opportunities for digital data entry,” Doaa Helmi, Coding teacher at Jurahiya Education Center says.
In parallel to our Future Skills Project, the Web Development Scholarship empowered 63 refugee and host community youth. This intensive course enabled young individuals to develop junior-level marketable skills in web development, along with the mindset and real-world experience necessary to shape a brighter future for themselves.
The curriculum starts from the basics of coding, using Python to build games and solve puzzles, before moving on to web design principles and the most important web development languages: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Through this project, students are given the opportunity to build a portfolio of work.
Adapting to Challenges
This project’s edition had its own unique challenge. The war started just as the project was kicking off, forcing us to shut down in-person learning in all Jusoor centers. The project’s team managed to still deliver the entire curriculum online despite numerous challenges including the fact that the students had limited access to internet, no experience with online learning software and no laptops at home.
Jusoor’s team spent time explaining clearly to the students how to use applications such as Zoom and make the internet available to the students by providing charge cards.
“We had to run the micro:bit program on mobiles which is very difficult as it crashes,” Doaa Helmi says. “We managed to always find ways to make it work.”
Ultimately, the youth were back in classrooms for the last month of the project after the ceasefire in Lebanon.
“We don’t let our circumstances define us. We care about gaining knowledge and skills no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in,” student Yousef al-Kadro concludes.
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