Amal and George Clooney will send 3,000 refugees to school in Lebanon

George and Amal Clooney have announced their plan to help send 3,000 Syrian refugees to school in Lebanon, The New Arab reported on Tuesday.

"The Clooney Foundation for Justice said it has teamed up with Google and HP Inc to help the UN children's agency UNICEF and the Lebanese Ministry of Education open seven so-called 'second shift' schools for Syrian refugee children," The New Arab wrote.

A generous $3.25 million donation from the Clooney Foundation for Justice, Google and HP will help pay for everything needed to make sure the refugee children get a decent education. 

Max Gleischman, a spokesman for the Clooneys' foundation explained that the organization "had decided to support education for Syrian refugees through the public school system, instead of investing in private schools operated by SABIS, an international company which has prepared students for college and high school exams."

According to The New Arab, "the foundation had announced last year that it would work to enroll thousands of children in SABIS schools."

In a joint statement on the matter, actor George Clooney and his wife, Lebanese-British international human rights lawyer, Amal Alamuddin, said: 

"We don't want to lose an entire generation because they had the bad luck of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thousands of young Syrian refugees are at risk - the risk of never being a productive part of society... formal education can help change that."

Amid the ongoing war in Syria, over a million refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon, including 500,000 children. 

The country's government is currently educating most of them "in public schools through a 'second shift' system of additional afternoon classes," The New Arab wrote. 

However, the currently implemented system is failing many, and according to Human Rights Watch, "more than half of the nearly 500,000 school-age Syrian children registered in Lebanon are not enrolled in formal education." 

While many believe that the influx of young refugees into the country only adds to its economic and social woes, statistics >reveal this isn't always the case. 

In fact, many scholars, including AUB professor Nasser Yassin, believe that young refugees will only add to the country's problems if they are left without an education. 

In an interview with >StepFeed earlier this year, Yassin explained that a "refugee only becomes a burden when they are left without education and without an opportunity to contribute to their host countries." 

He also added that Lebanon's major concern today should be the large numbers of young refugees who are not attending school.