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WOSS grad helps tutor Syrian refugees online by Julia Le Oakville Beaver Staff 7 | Thursday, February 18, 2016 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com Every week, Tony Mistak spends an hour or two out of his hectic schedule at McGill University in Montreal, Que., tutoring a Syrian refugee online. The White Oaks Secondary School (WOSS) graduate is among nearly three dozen students at his off-campus residence who have been logging onto Skype regularly to help Syrians prepare to take the IELTS (International English Language Testing System). The test is developed by the world's leading experts in language assessment on four key English language skills: listening, reading, writing and speaking. It is designed to assess the language ability of people who aim to study, work, immigrate and integrate into an English-speaking environment. Mistak, a first-year psychology student, says most of the refugees he and his cohort are tutoring have aspirations to study at a Canadian university. In Mohammed Sarhan's case -- the 20-yearold Syrian refugee who has been paired up with Mistak and three others -- has plans to take the IELTS test in March. He hopes to study computer engineering at Concordia University in Montreal. Mistak, who grew up in Oakville, said his sessions with Sarhan will be ramping up to two-hour-long chats as they prepare for the upcoming test. "I'm focusing on the reading section of that, so I'm making sure he understands how to read well and understand what he reads," said the 18-year-old. The other tutors on Mistak's team are focused on improving Sarhan's listening, writing and speaking skills. The students are all part of the LivingLearning Community at one of McGill's offcampus residences. Mistak joined the group so he could continue to be involved in the community and give back in a meaningful way. "It's always been very important for me to get involved and do something impactful," said Mistak, who ran an activism club when he was in high school and often travelled with his family to Cambodia to build houses in the past. The Living-Learning Community made the decision to help Syrian refugees in October 2015 after a brainstorming session on how its members could make a social impact on the world. That led them to connect with the Syrian Kids Foundation, which offers humanitarian relief and social services to Syrian refugees. The services include free education, psychological counseling, dentistry, social relief, recreational activities, and essential subsidies -- as well as regular free workshops on family and White Oaks Secondary School graduate Tony Mistak is helping tutor Syrian refugees online. | submitted photo crisis counseling by volunteer psychologists. Syrian Kids Foundation also built a school in Turkey; however, it has been lacking a volunteer English teacher over the past few months. Mistak said their group saw a way to fill that void. Having helped tutor a few individuals over the last few months, he noted it's been a gratifying experience to help in the humanitarian crisis in a unique way. It's been an interesting experience for him to interact with others, who are close in age, but lead very different lives. "It's very surprising, although not really surprising, that they are very similar to people here," he said. "There are small minute details like cultural gender norms, but other than that, everything is pretty much similar." The one thing that did stand out most about the Syrian refugees he tutored, though, was their passion to have a better life, he explained. 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