Saudi educator known for charity and prisoner work wins $1 million Global Teacher Prize

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi educator known for his charity work and instructing prisoners won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize on Thursday.

Mansour al-Mansour received the award at the end of the World Governments Summit in Dubai, an annual event that draws leaders from across the globe.

Al-Mansour, a teacher at the Prince Saud bin Jalawi School in al-Ahsa, is also an author and is known for work in his community, including a program that helped ensure people had access to air conditioning maintenance during Saudi Arabia's scorching summer months. He also works with orphans and hopes to use the prize to build a school for them.

“People always have pity on orphans, and if they want to help them, they usually do so by giving them food and water only. But there’s little education,” al-Mansour told The Associated Press after receiving the prize from Dubai's crown prince, Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Maktoum. “Through a study, I found that orphans are less educated, so I wanted to pay attention to them.”

The prize is awarded by the Varkey Foundation, whose founder, Sunny Varkey, established the for-profit GEMS Education company that runs dozens of schools in Egypt, Qatar and the UAE.

Al-Mansour is the ninth teacher to win the award from the foundation, which first began handing out the prize in 2015. He's the first from the Gulf Arab states to win.

“We’re now working on a project called 'Life Skills' and we enroll students in it. Some of these skills include dialogue, communications and financial awareness," al-Mansour said. "We did a huge project for the poor called financial awareness. We enabled a lot of students in business matters; some even opened their own shops.”

Al-Mansour also works with prisoners, helping them learn to read and write. Several have seen their sentences reduced after his lessons.

Past winners of the Global Teacher Prize have included a Kenyan teacher from a remote village who gave away most of his earnings to the poor, a Palestinian primary school teacher who teaches her students about non-violence and a Canadian educator who taught a remote Arctic village of Inuit students.

GEMS Education, or Global Education Management Systems, is one of the world's largest private school operators and is believed to be worth billions. Its success has followed that of Dubai, where only private schools offer classes for the children of the foreigners who power its economy.

GEMS plans to open a school later this year targeting the children of the ultra-wealthy families now moving to booming, skyscraper-studded Dubai.

The Gems School of Research and Innovation in Dubai, which is planned to have a robotics lab, an Olympic-size swimming pool and an elevated football pitch that doubles as a helipad, will charge fees running from $31,000 for students in pre-K and kindergarten to $56,000 for high-school seniors.