Finnish teacher secretly taught IS children through WhatsApp during Covid pandemic, World …

Ilona Taimela, a teacher based out of Finland, has opened up about teaching children of people linked to the Islamic State (IS) through WhatsApp. “Whoever the children are, they have a right to education,” she told the BBC. Taimela stated teaching 23 Finnish children who lived in al-Hol camp, which is a tent city of nearly 60,000 people who are related to the IS group. These children have been holed up in these tents for years now while western countries assess if the children and their mother can be repatriated or do they pose a future threat. The children were able to get worldly learnings only from semi-functioning charity schools. Also read | India gifts 2,000 tonnes of rice to Syria as ‘humanitarian assistance However, with Taimela’s classes, the children saw a ray of hope. When the pandemic began in 2020, Finland’s government promoted the idea of teaching the Finnish kids stuck in the camp through virtual aids. The government then commissioned an initiative called Lifelong Learning Foundation, which aims to develop a distance teaching programme. Headed by Tuija Tammelander, the foundation’s school of diatcne learning contacted Taimela who quickly jumoed to the opportunity and also helped bring in another teacher. The two…
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