The director of the UN’s culture and education organization reported on Thursday in the Lebanese capital that it will organize two conferences to obtain considerable funding for Beirut.

In the same context, Audrey Azoulay informed AFP over its visit to a school destroyed by the large blast at the port of Beirut that two events will be soon. She also said, indicating a group set up since the COVID-19 pandemic to support online learning: The first one will be a meeting of the Global Education Coalition dedicated to Lebanon, and she added: The country absolutely needs to be better prepared on this issue of remote learning.

Almost 160 schools were damaged or broken by the explosion that causes the death of more than 180 people and destroyed whole neighborhoods of Beirut, according to UNESCO.

Moreover, Azoulay also reported that almost 85,000 children were directly affected by the destruction that happened because of the explosion at Beirut port.

Otherwise, and with the beginning of the new school year, theoretically, just a few days later, the blast was conducted to a serious crisis that the educational system previously faced because of Covid-19 and an unprecedented economic crisis.

The director of the UN’s culture and education organization declared that a preliminary evaluation revealed that $22 million would be needed just to reconstruct broken schools. She also said that a second conference would be organized, probably in late September, to raise funds for Beirut’s heritage and the cultural sector.

Azoulay declared that the objective was to secure international funding for culture, of the kind that usually comes after reconstruction efforts. She also said: It needs to come now, and she added that while estimates were underway, the funding needed would be considerable.