The Global Virtual English Classroom

Why English. Why now.

For a child growing up without family care, English is not a subject. It is a passport. It opens the door to stable work, higher education, and a future written on the child's own terms.

The classroom is virtual, but the relationships are not. Small groups meet the same educator week after week. The learning is language. The lesson underneath is that someone showed up. Someone stayed.

A teacher's influence never expires. It only waits for the next student. The premise of the classroom

Where we're starting

Ethiopia and Egypt.

The first classrooms are hosted inside vetted orphanages in Ethiopia and Egypt. Two countries chosen not at random. They are where our leadership has the deepest ties, the closest relationships, and the on-the-ground trust required to place American volunteers into a child's daily life.

Every partner site is one Dr. Michael Ghaly has personally visited or vetted through trusted local partners, drawing on decades of global travel and volunteer work in orphanages around the world.

Our Origin

A note to a former professor.

The classroom began with a thank-you letter. Our founder, Dr. Michael Ghaly, reached out to a former professor who had taught him more than thirty years earlier.

What returned was not a polite reply. It was joy. The kind that only travels one direction, from student to teacher, and only lands when it does.

The Global Virtual English Classroom is built on that current. Wisdom given away, decades later, still finding a home.

A Safe Digital Sanctuary

Digital walls, held to the same standard as physical ones.

Every child in the classroom is protected by a layered safeguarding policy. Nothing about the classroom is left to trust alone.

01 · Vetting

Rigorous background checks.

Every volunteer, from elementary teachers to college professors, passes a formal background check and a personal interview before entering a classroom.

02 · Supervision

Never one adult, one child.

Lessons are conducted in small groups. A local, vetted coordinator is physically present at the partner orphanage for every session.

03 · Monitoring

Real-time software safety monitoring.

Live sessions are supported by AI-assisted safety monitoring designed to flag inappropriate content or behavior in real time, alongside human review by our leadership team.

04 · Boundaries

One channel. One direction.

All contact between volunteers and students happens through the official Rifka's House portal. Personal phone numbers, emails, and social media handles are never shared.

05 · Presence

Local staff, on the ground.

While our volunteers teach through the screen, trusted local staff at each partner orphanage manage the technology, guide the room, and know every child by name.

06 · Oversight

Reviewed. Audited. Accountable.

Sessions are logged and periodically reviewed by our leadership team for quality and compliance with our safeguarding policy. Read the full Safeguarding Statement.

Honoring the Teachers Who Shaped Us

A great teacher's influence echoes.

The classroom is not only for the children it serves. It is for every teacher whose name a former student still remembers. Ask your old teacher to consider volunteering. Or nominate them so their name lives on our Honor Roll.

Volunteer Spotlights.

We feature our active retired educators on the site, sharing decades of service in American classrooms and the progress of the students they now teach.

The Living Honor Roll.

Nominate a teacher who shaped your life, the way our founder honored the former professor who taught him decades ago. Their name lives on our permanent Honor Roll.

Memorial Dedications.

Set a lasting tribute for a beloved educator who has passed. Their passion for teaching continues in every child who learns because of them.

Ways to help

Build the bridge with us.

Phase One is live and growing. There are three ways to help us extend the classroom to more children.

Volunteer as an educatorRetired teachers and professors who want to teach English online. Weekly commitment. All training, portal access, and safeguarding orientation provided.
Donate a laptop or ChromebookWorking desktops, laptops, MacBooks, and Chromebooks with charging cables and keyboards. We do not accept tablets. Children need physical keyboards to learn to type in English.
Nominate a teacherNominate the teacher who shaped your life to be featured on our permanent Honor Roll, or invite them to volunteer alongside us.

Volunteer Donate a device Nominate a teacher

Every donated device is wiped clean and pre-configured with the secure portal before it reaches a child. Rifka's House is a registered 501(c)(3) public charity.

Open a door for a child
who cannot yet read the words.

Volunteer. Donate a laptop. Nominate the teacher who changed your life. Every path leads to the same classroom.

Volunteer as a teacher Get in touch

The Global Virtual English Classroom.