Older refugee students tutored younger ones. Five years later, it's still running.

When COVID lockdowns closed schools in March 2020, Prince Bashangezi was finishing his A-Levels at Tongogara Refugee Camp in Zimbabwe, home to more than 17,000 people displaced by conflict. Formal teaching stopped. Prince and a group of fellow students at USAP Community School decided not to wait for it to come back. They founded TWEENS, short for Together We Educationally Empower Non-privileged Students, built around the one resource they had. Each other. Older refugee students tutored younger ones in the same camp, their credibility coming from living where their students lived rather than from any credential. The program, supported by Education Matters Africa, outlasted the lockdown that started it. Prince now studies computer science and economics at Pomona College in California, reached through a network that selects students from conflict zones. Marianne Langridge, who nominated him, wrote that he has turned losing his family during war into "loving service for others." TWEENS has been running for five years.