Over two thousand international leading thinkers joined a two-day global educational summit to discuss the future of the education in the refugee crisis.

Participants from one hundred countries in the fields of education, technology and economic development gathered together in Doha, Qatar on Wednesday and Thursday for the eighth World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an educational campaign by Education Above All, calling for action to help young refugees and internally displaced youths.

As more than 260 million children and adolescents are currently out of school--a number that has stagnated since 2007, world leaders are calling for immediate action to improve education provisions for young refugees and internally displaced youths who are five times more likely to be out of school than others.

“Tens of millions of children are deprived of education. We cannot afford lost generations. No single child should be left behind. It is our moral duty to do more. This is why I will devote in 2018 eight percent of the EU’s humanitarian budget to education in emergencies,” said Commissioner Christos Stylianides, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management.

In a keynote address at Education Above All Foundation’s high-level panel on “Asset over Burden – Education for Refugee Youth,” his excellency, Mr. Nana Akufo-Addo, president of Ghana, co-chair of SDG Advocates said that the specter of tens of millions of young refugees growing up without the needed skills to create a meaningful life for themselves is a dangerous one.

EAA Foundation signed several new partnerships at the event, as part of the Foundation’s commitment, to address the global education crisis and its goal of enrolling ten million out-of-school children. Launched in 2012 with the mission to enable human development through the provision of inclusive quality education, the Foundation has already committed to providing educational opportunities to 7.3 million children worldwide.

The new partnerships will help over 3,000 Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Turkey with full university scholarships, including tuition, accommodation, health insurance and a monthly stipend in partnership with SPARK and the Council of Higher Education in Turkey.

Also included in the project are 30 Palestinian junior high school teachers from Gaza.  They will pursue graduate studies degree in the United Kingdom while attending an exchange study program through the British Council.