In Focus: Suha Tutunji
By Rosie Hughes
Suha Tutunji is the academic director of Jusoor, a non-profit organization formed by Syrian expatriates. Among other initiatives, Jusoor runs three education centers for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Prior to joining Jusoor five years ago, Tutunji worked as an administrator, teacher, and curriculum developer for private schools in Lebanon for 25 years. In her time with Jusoor, she has worked with dozens of researchers from across the world who come to Lebanon to study issues related to refugee education.
We spoke with her about how she uses research to inform her work, what makes a good research collaborator, and what keeps her going.
“I think that if you make use of research to benefit you because you want to benefit the children, the teachers, the parents and the community, research can be really very important.”
How does research inform your work with Jusoor?
In the past five years, research in education in emergencies has really grown. So we have had plenty of researchers reach out to us, looking into many different things, like art therapy, technology, how NGOs work together, teachers who are refugees themselves, the curriculum, you name it. So all of these researchers came and at some point it became a bit too much. I do not like to say no, but some of the research was not very helpful to us. Sometimes researchers gained, but we didn’t, from the research.
So I shifted to only say ‘yes’ to the research that was both a benefit to the researcher and also to us. This became much better. I know some colleagues of mine who work in NGOs don’t accept research. They think that nothing good is going to come out of research that’s going to be written and then thrown in drawers. But I don’t think so. I think that if you make use of research to benefit you because you want to benefit the children, the teachers, the parents and the community, research can be really very important and useful.
How many researchers have you worked with in your time at Jusoor?
Over 60 in the past five years. They’ve come from all over the world, but only one or two from Arabic countries. All the rest are from abroad. I find this amazingly sad. We need to have more researchers from the countries themselves and have the findings written in Arabic or at least translated into Arabic.
Can you say more about this gap and talk about any ways you are addressing it, even on a small scale?
This year I made all the teachers read some research. I translated it to Arabic, and we all read it and had a discussion in our training session, asking, ‘What do you think about it? How does this apply to us? How can we apply it?’ The teachers came up with ideas and we wrote them down. And so I want to continue to ask our staff to read important research and see how they view it and how they think they can implement findings in our schools. It was very successful when we did this. The only problem, as I said, is that there is not sufficient research in Arabic and most of the teachers have elementary English. So we had to translate it ourselves. I would really like to recommend that this research be translated into Arabic and be shared so that research can used with the non-English speakers as well.
It sounds like one thing that’s helpful is when a researcher is doing work that can also benefit Jusoor. What else makes a good research collaborator?
Getting them involved within the NGO that they are researching is very important. First, they get to understand the context much better. Second, they are like another set of eyes and brains that can help the NGO. And then third, they have to give back — we are taking time from the teachers, the parents, the staff, to sit and talk with them. So they might as well give back by helping out. For example, one of the researchers helped fine-tune our information sheet, another gave workshops, another gave the teachers English classes.
Clearly you have a lot of energy for this work, and also it must be really difficult at times. What keeps you motivated and hopeful?
The best thing that happens is when I find that our students who started off with zero literacy are now doing their national exams in Lebanon and are motivated to study and continue with their education. So when I see success stories, even if it’s 2 percent or 3 percent its better than 0 percent. It’s encouraging to know that some of these children are moving on.