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It was a daunting task. To get a huge number of Syrian refugees into Lebanon�鶹APP�s public school system while continuing to provide a quality education for local children.

But Elias Bou Saab �鶹APP� in his role as Lebanese education minister �鶹APP� tackled the challenge head-on. With a mixture of honesty, innovation and charm, he travelled the world asking for help and oversaw a massively complex school enrollment programme.

More than 200,000 children who fled from the Syrian conflict are now learning in Lebanon�鶹APP�s schools, thanks mainly to the double-shift system that sees refugee and local students using the same classrooms at different times of the day.

A new government cabinet was named this week and Bou Saab�鶹APP�s term has come to an end after almost three years. He can look back with pride at what has been achieved, aided by international donors, NGOs, United Nations agencies and the Lebanese government. 

But the Syrians enrolled in school in Lebanon account for only half of the country�鶹APP�s refugee children. Much more has still to be done if every girl and boy is to get an education.

Bou Saab has a warning for world leaders.

�鶹APP�If this aid stops, what is going to happen to these children? Both the Syrian and the Lebanese?�鶹APP� he asked in an exclusive podcast interview with �鶹APP President Sarah Brown.

You can listen to the full interview here

�鶹APP�The biggest nightmare would be if the international community decides one day to drop this project. To stop supporting it. Then we will have a total failure not only for the refugees but also for the Lebanese students that are in our education system.�鶹APP�

Bou Saab knows what it feels like as a child to be torn from your home by conflict and end up in another country.

�鶹APP�I myself was a refugee once. I went to Syria after a war in Lebanon,�鶹APP� he told Sarah in an episode of her .

�鶹APP�I stayed one entire year without school. I know what it means. I know that in the future we will regret if we had the opportunity to put these children in school and not have an entire lost generation and we did not do it.�鶹APP�

Education and helping young people to fulfil their potential have been themes running through Bou Saab�鶹APP�s life. He earned a marketing degree in London, studied international relations at Boston University in the United States and later founded the American University in Dubai.

As a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, he established a scholarship programme to give American students the chance to study in the Middle East. 

He was mayor of his home town for three years from 2010 �鶹APP� setting the scene for his move into the national and international spotlight. In February 2014, Bou Saab was appointed Lebanon�鶹APP�s Minister of Education and Higher Education.

His most pressing problem was how to integrate the growing number of Syrian refugees into local schools. That meant not just finding classrooms �鶹APP� but also arranging buses, meals, teachers and supplies.

And all that as he went globetrotting to persuade international donors and key influencers that Lebanon could not do this on its own. The willingness was there but the country needed financial help.

�鶹APP�It was a big challenge for me when I took on this post,�鶹APP� he told Sarah. �鶹APP�We had 250,000 Lebanese students in the government system schools. At the same time there were 450,000 Syrian students that are refugees and are in Lebanon and require education.

�鶹APP�I immediately thought that we need to look at two things. 

�鶹APP�One, how do we improve the quality of the education for the Lebanese students and keep the host community accepting the refugees �鶹APP� because without the acceptance we would not be able to accommodate the refugees into our communities. 

�鶹APP�Then take the refugees and put them all in the classrooms because every child deserves the right to have quality education.�鶹APP�

A large chunk of the answer lay in the innovative but simple double-shift school system. In September 2013, a report published by �鶹APP�鶹APP�s A World at School movement called for international funding to help provide this and other solutions to the crisis.

That was backed up by another �鶹APP report last year called . It praised the work of the Lebanese education ministry but said more financial support was needed from the international community.

That seemed to have arrived in February this year, when the co-hosts of the Supporting Syria and the Region conference in London promised to provide the funding to get one million Syrian refugees into school in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

There has been progress �鶹APP� but not enough. As we approach the anniversary of that pledge, the funding is still well short and hundreds of thousands of refugee children are still out of school.

�鶹APP�It is frustrating �鶹APP� but without what we are doing these children will remain on the street without hope, without education,�鶹APP� said Bou Saab. 

�鶹APP�They become a big challenge not just for Lebanon and the region but for the international community in the future. 

�鶹APP�This is how you get terrorist recruiting, uneducated children. This is how you fear that they are going to towards child labour, early marriage. Everything that you don�鶹APP�t want to see in our world. 

�鶹APP�For that I feel that it is our obligation to do everything we can and talk to everyone around the globe to say how we can have a better world and how we can tackle this situation and bring in hope for these children.

�鶹APP�Because the future is theirs and not ours. If we don�鶹APP�t help doing it, we will regret it.�鶹APP�