• Céline Arslane is a young woman entrepreneur from Lebanon who believes that education and mental health are fundamental human rights. 
• Lebanon’s deep economic crisis is forcing many students to work for a living and drop out of university.
• Céline started a platform to offer flexible online tutoring to Lebanese university students. She hopes to incorporate more mental health components in the future.
• Céline joined the UNITAR Great Ideas Space 2022: Entrepreneurship for Public Health and COVID-19 Recovery Programme. 
• The programme was “life-changing”, encouraging Céline to step out of her comfort zone and gain confidence.

At university, Céline sees the young people in Lebanon going through a difficult time. Lebanon has been in a deep economic crisis for several years, made all the worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. All around her, Céline sees students dropping out of school to earn a living. 

Even among those who remain in university, many skip classes to go to work and fall behind in their studies. In a negative spiral, the stress – of having to earn money and keep up their studies – further hampers the students’ academic performance. Céline experienced this herself.

This is not something that teenagers should worry about. They should live their teenage years.

Céline believes that education and mental health are fundamental human rights. One day, she was talking about it with her friend. Her friend asked why she didn’t put her ideas into action, merging mental health and education.

That was the spark Céline needed to create a platform to offer university students flexible online tutoring. The tutoring would fit around the students’ work schedules and help them continue their studies.

The biggest thing that makes her work challenging is discrimination. First, she’s a woman and – while attitudes are evolving – many people still expect women to leave the business to men. 

Second, she is young. Céline says she knows she does not have the same amount of experience a 40-year-old man might have, but “that doesn’t mean I don’t have potential, that I’m dumb.” She has her knowledge and experiences, and she is always learning more. 

When they see a young entrepreneur, pitching their project, they don’t take you seriously, she says. 

And third, mental health itself is a heavily stigmatized topic in Lebanon. “If you tell people you’re going to a therapist, they’re like ‘Oh, therapy is just for “crazy” people’”, she says. “It’s very, very wrong.”

Initially, she feared the in-person training would get competitive because the participants were all young entrepreneurs fighting to build their businesses. But she was surprised to find everyone supportive and friendly. She values the interactions and the new viewpoints the participants and coaches showed her.

But it was not just new business knowledge that she learned. By encouraging her to step out of her comfort zone, Céline says the UNITAR programme helped her gain confidence and recognize her capabilities. She calls the experience “life-changing”.

Returning to her country, Céline plans to put to use what she learned about customer acquisition and market entry. Securing funds and going to market are her next steps.

Her vision for her platform is to incorporate more mental health support, potentially collaborating with therapists. She is ready to explore – including finding ways to work with her UNITAR cohort. 

Supporting young people to access education while promoting mental health, she says, brings her one step closer to her dream of being a human rights advocate.

I want to reach as many young people as possible. I want to create a safe place. I want them to feel like they’re not alone in the journey.

As UNITAR Hiroshima celebrates its 20th anniversary, Céline calls upon UNITAR to reach many more young people. She believes UNITAR will get young people out of their comfort zones and help them to believe in themselves – as it did with her.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is a United Nations agency that promotes decision-making for a better future through training individuals and groups. Established in 1963, UNITAR reached 370,139 learners through its courses in 2021. In addition to its headquarters in Geneva, UNITAR has offices in New York, Hiroshima, and Bonn, as well as other networks around the world. UNITAR Division for Prosperity shares world-class knowledge and skills related to entrepreneurship, leadership, trade and finance, digital technologies, and disarmament. Especially from its Hiroshima Office and in training for learners from conflict and post-conflict countries, UNITAR incorporates Hiroshima’s rise from the atomic bombing to the current peaceful city as a model of reconstruction. In 2019, the UNITAR Association was established as a public support organization in Japan. It supports UNITAR through publicity and awareness-raising in Japan.

United Nations Online Volunteer Rebecca Rentzsch contributed to this article.