MAKKAH: A Saudi engineer is helping Arab children and refugees in the West connect with their culture and roots through Arabic language lessons.
Mohammed Al-Taweelie, who has work experience in Germany, said that he observed a lack of Arabic language content and fluency among the Arab community and refugee children in the West.
It led him to launch Daad with personal funding. The initiative provides storytelling and learning activities for children through their online database. “This project has produced over 140 high-quality Arabic stories with audio and video available for free,” he told Arab News.
The Arabic stories are written in various categories for age groups 6-8 years and 9-12 years.
Dadd has officially been registered as a voluntary, nonprofit organization in Germany, he said.
Al-Taweelie said that the initiative’s purpose was “to enhance Arabic electronic content in Europe, aiming to enrich Arabic content and address its deficiencies in various fields of knowledge. The initiative included programs and competitions for students, resulting in over 50 million visits to scientific articles.”
Saudi students have done remarkably well abroad, he said. Speaking about activities he had been involved in, he said: “I founded several student clubs to support foreign and German students. I gained the trust of students at the Technical University of Dortmund, where I was elected by the university’s students in many associations.”
Al-Taweelie also served as a spokesperson for foreign students and students of the faculty of electrical engineering and communication at the university, as well as for the Student Relief and Support Fund at the Technical University of Dortmund.
He was honored by the Saudi Embassy in Berlin and twice received a distinction award from the Saudi Cultural Mission in Germany because, beyond his contributions at university, he also volunteered to work with the city of Dortmund through volunteer and social responsibility programs, especially refugee support programs.
Al-Taweelie, who studied at Al-Jazeera High School in Tabuk, has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in electrical and communications engineering, specializing in robotics and automotive technology. His research at the Technical University of Dortmund focused on artificial intelligence.
