LEONARD EDUCATION ORGANIZATION INC

Our main mission is to help prepare Palestine's future scientists, policymakers, educators, business men and women, and entrepreneurs. We believe that education and intercultural exchange is the essential path to peace, stability, and development. We aim to change families' lives one student at a time by offering opportunities that are otherwise unattainable or unreachable to most of our students.

Our volunteers, who are alumni of the program, partners and different professionals create a holistic support system for our current students. This mentoring relationship is fostered at the start when we first get the application. The assigned mentor(s) first guide the applicant through the application process and supports their various needs being it preparing them for SAT, TOEFL, choosing their university list, Common App application, CSS Profile... Then depending on the results a mentor from the school they get is assigned for them to answer any questions in preparation for their arrival. Students are all connected through our private Facebook group and throughout their studies and beyond they are encouraged to reach out to any of our community members for guidance. The founder and executive director is also always reachable and follows up with their news and progress academically or otherwise. In addition to that, our partners in different countries also provide on the ground support for our students and applicants. We rely on our regional partners in identifying applicants and their needs.

The organization is almost entirely run by alumni volunteers who work closely with the executive director on the various needs of LE.O. We rely heavily on the generous support and donations from our community who value our work and understand our mission. The money that is donated is almost entirely used for students' expenses with very small part of it being utilized for running and maintaining our website and promotional materials and other miscellaneous administrative expenses. In addition to the support we receive from our regional partners.

We have 56 students in our community. We have also partnered with 16 institutions in 6 countries that offer very generous scholarships valued at around 9 million dollars. Our students go on to pursue masters and PhD programs in the US and abroad. LE.O is growing at a very fast pace thanks to our supportive community of alumni, students, donors and volunteers. We are working on addressing more than what we initially planned on doing and extended our support to Palestinian students who require gap funding for their programs, support in getting jobs and internships. We are working on adding 4-5 students a year and would like to increase that number depending on our available funding.