Mission Statement
Opportutoring (OT) is a student-led organization that links English speakers and refugees from around the world. Each student is paired with tutors and receives a total of 4 hours of one-on-one English online tutoring per week. OT aims to tackle the refugee crisis, in which 34% of the world’s youth attends university but only 1% of youth refugees have access to these universities. Through a needs assessments, OT found that a main barrier which hinders their chances for higher-education institutions and/or employment is language. Thus, on one hand, both employment and learning institutions require strict language requirements, an obstacle for many competent young refugees. On the other hand, numerous English speakers wish to make a positive impact in the lives of others. OT saw an opportunity to bridge this gap and connect refugees in need of language skills and passionate English speakers.
Our story
Our
History
Opportutoring is a project that started off in 2015 in a McGill residence. The project’s aim was to provide English tutoring via Skype to Syrian refugees, for them to be take an English proficiency exam (TOEFL or IELTS), in order to be accepted to Concordia, an anglophone university in Montreal. The students in question were at a school in Turkey, at the border with Syria, directed by The Syrian Kids Foundation, a Montreal-based charity. After more than 6 months of online tutoring, 2 students passed the exam, and were accepted at Concordia in August 2016.
Since then OT has expanded in 2018 to London and Beijing where we currently have two functioning chapters.
Our partners
FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers
No. Opportutoring is neither religious nor political. Its purpose is not to assign blame or side with anyone other than the students we provide lessons to. We recognize that our members may hold such political or religious affiliations but Opportutoring as an organization remains neutral in this regard.
Opportutoring recruits new students in a number of ways. Through partnerships with various ONG like Banaat Connect, the UNHCR or ECHO Refugee Library, we come in contact with potential students. We also rely heavily on word of mouth from our existing students as they are best able to communicate the benefits of our program. Finally our social media platforms allow us to be reached directly by potential students interested in English Lessons.
Opportutoring provides online 1-on-1 english lessons to resettled refugees around the world. We also provide training for our volunteers members and the opportunity to gain real access to experiences allowing to them to truly become global citizens.
Opportutoring is a student organization entirely volunteer-run so our classes remain 100% free to our students. Neither our tutors or admin team gets paid and all the money raised through our fundraising efforts is solely used to develop our organization with the aim of increasing teaching quality.
OT started at McGill in 2015, however, we have now three chapters spread around the world working together as an international organization. Those chapters contain the original one in Montreal but also London in the UK and Beijing in China.