George & Amal Clooney’s Foundation To Fund Public Schools For Syrian Refugee Children

George Clooney‘s foundation, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, pledged on Monday to open seven public schools for Syrian refugee children.

The announcement comes with the creation of new partnership between the foundation, Google, HP and UNICEF.

The schools will be built in Lebanon – Clooney’s wife, co-founder of the foundation, and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, was born in Lebanon – and will provide an education to more than 3,000 refugee children, according to a press release from UNICEF.

The partnership brings $2.25 million to the region and to the thousands of children currently out of school.

“Thousands of young Syrian refugees are at risk – the risk of never being a productive part of society,” the couple said in the statement.

“Formal education can help change that. That’s our goal with this initiative. We don’t want to lose an entire generation because they had the bad luck of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“[The refugees] have been victims of geography and circumstance, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope. Our goal with this initiative is to help provide Syrian refugee children with an education and put them on a path to be the future leaders their generation desperately needs,” the couple said in a statement.

George and Amal Clooney founded the charitable foundation in 2016. Their mission, as stated on their website, is to “advance justice in courtrooms, communities, and classrooms around the world.”

According the the foundation’s website, about a third of Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon are not in school. Instead, they work for low wages in poor conditions, which makes it difficult to advance economically.

The couple, who married in 2014, celebrated the birth of their twins, Ella and Alexander Clooney, in June.