Al-Khobar — She is a private tutor to many poor children. But she does not charge any tuition fees.

Zahra Hashem Al-Moslem, a Saudi female college student at Abdul Rahman Bin Faisal University in Al-Khobar, takes time off from her weekly schedule to teach poor children.

She told Al Arabiya English that the idea stared last year at a time when she was ill and being treated at a hospital.

“On my way to hospital I saw a boy carrying his book, and asking people for money... I sat next to him and opened his book and began explaining to him some of his studies.

“After that I fell in love with the idea of teaching the children belonging to needy families. The challenge was how to start and where to advertise for it,” she said.

Zahra said that she began distributing fliers in poor neighborhoods of Al-Khobar.

“I began telling the children of these neighborhoods that anyone who needs a private tutor for free that I’m capable of doing that.”

It was challenging for her at first to know where she would give her private classes, until she thought of a colleague who lived nearby, and began teaching the students at her place.

“At first I started by teaching a girl and a boy, then four girls and two boys,” she said.

Given that she lives on her college campus, Zahra could not continuously ask for permission to leave, so she increased the hours of her private class to three to cover the children’s school curriculum.

When asked if she gets financial support to implement these ideas, she replied: “I am a student and I live on my university stipend from teaching the preparatory year students at university. I invest in teaching the needy children,” she said. — SG