Aleppo’s secret schools teach survival skills, career tips

With 110 teachers, most of them new to the profession, the organization runs seven schools serving around 3,000 children in the divided and war-ravaged city that is home to around 350,000 people.

Marcell Shehwaro, executive director of Kesh Malek, said the group’s schools had closed for a holiday and had not re-opened due to the intensified bombardment in recent days. “When working on education you feel how important it is that there is another generation, and this generation needs to have a chance, the chance to have education,” she said. 

“We are thinking short-term. If Aleppo is besieged tomorrow, we are going to find a creative way to face that. It’s all about resistance.” Kesh Malek has tried to locate its schools in basements surrounded by high buildings, that present clear targets, to provide some protection against aerial bombardments. 

A former dentist who left the profession in 2010 to study political science, she later became an early participant in protests against President Bashar al-Assad. A Christian, Shehwaro serves Aleppo’s Sunni Muslim community. 

The name Kesh Malek means checkmate, or defeat of the king in chess, and refers to the group’s ideal of creating a democratic republic in Syria. The group started setting up schools in Aleppo in 2011. “ Right now none of our schools have a yard. We don’t have sports or this kind of activity,” she said. “We replace that with drawing and puppet shows and indoor activities.” Gender is a major focus for Shehwaro. 

Activities have included encouraging girls to formulate dreams for the future such as becoming a president or a carpenter, and one of the services on offer is home schooling for girls who married early.