Siroun Shamigian

A language in decline

Siroun Shamigian never thought she would become a teacher or an entrepreneur, let alone both. During her first teaching job at the age of 18, working to support herself through her studies for a Biology degree at Haigazian University, she fell in love with the profession.

During her 23 years of high school teaching, she was always among the first to explore how to use technology effectively in her classroom. When her results were consistently outstanding, the school noticed, and tasked her with supporting other teachers to do the same. This is when she discovered that Arabic teachers had access to very few support tools; and their challenges at technology integration were the most profound. At the same time, Arabic teachers were surprised to see less and less of their students able to write in Arabic. With 60% of Arab countries’ populations under the age of 25 as reported by the Middle East Youth Initiative (MEYI), she knew this problem was only going to get worse.

Siroun, therefore, took it upon herself to try and rectify this problem. “I left the job that I loved to start my entrepreneurial journey and I haven’t looked back since.”

Innovating the teaching and learning of Arabic

Together with her co-founder who is also an educator, and a small team of volunteers, Siroun founded Kamkalima. “I knew teachers were struggling with the lack of up-to-date teaching tools for the Arabic language, so we created a web-based platform that delivers an engaging learning experience that benefits both teacher and student.” Transforming writing assignments into a fun, engaging learning experience, students are supported by machine-learning algorithms to offer individual guidance and feedback to students, whilst nurturing the development of their writing and comprehension skills in Arabic. The programme also provides visual cues, known as “intellitips”, specifically catering to pupils with learning difficulties.

Thanks to Kamkalima, teachers have a complete picture of students’ progress over time and can better support them, enabling them to meet their learning objectives both as individuals and as a group.

50 million students

In only its first year, Kamkalima has benefited 12,000 students in 35 schools across two countries. Siroun has big plans for the platform and hopes to grow the impact significantly in the future. “We want to reach as many of the 50 million students across 138,000 schools in 17 Arabic speaking countries as our resources will allow.”

Siroun’s family were initially worried about her decision to give up a steady and secure job to venture into business, but her greatest obstacle to overcome was her own sense of guilt: “As women, we are good at finding things to feel guilty about. But I believe there are no bad decisions in life. There are only decisions taken,and it is up to us to make them turn out well.” Something that Siroun has truly managed.