Our Story

The Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange (CEPAL) is a volunteer-run Canadian non-governmental organization (NGO) and registered charity founded in 1995. CEPAL exists to support Palestinian students with accessing and continuing education while raising Canadians’ awareness of the challenges that Palestinian students face across the world.

We believe that education is the foundation for a brighter future.

For many years, CEPAL’s core program involved sending Canadian volunteers to teach English in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. However, following the 2006 war in Lebanon, CEPAL withdrew its on-the-ground presence out of a concern for the safety of volunteers. Ongoing political instability, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic further limited our ability to operate in person in Lebanon after 2010.

Accordingly, we shifted our approach in 2020, and began to offer programs for students remotely, in league with local NGOs in Lebanon. Our online English-language tutoring program in an ongoing partnership with the Unite Lebanon Youth Project.

In 2023, in a renewed effort to rebuild presence and impact, CEPAL conducted an extensive on-the-ground needs assessment. In the Spring and Summer, a CEPAL Board Director led this initiative, conducting research and extensive interviews with local NGOs, students, teachers, and parents.

As CEPAL was finalizing this needs assessment and deepening its engagement with local partners, the events of October 7, 2023 unfolded, which further shifted regional workings. In 2024, CEPAL began to weigh the possibility of adjusting its historic focus on Palestinian students in Lebanon.

The result became CEPAL’s newest program, Higher Education Access for Palestine (HEAP), which launched in the Spring of 2025 and which had supporting students in Gaza as its objective. Most of CEPAL’s efforts on on expanding to this new program, and in finding ways to augment its network of supporters in Canada.