This North Syrian School Is a Baby Step Toward a Blockchain Society

That's how 22-year-old programming student Mohamed Abdullah describes the Open Academy - a new school in North Syria, a de-facto autonomous region also known as Rojava.

North Syria has been researching how technologies such as blockchain could complement its societal model, which is built on an ethos of decentralization.

Kurdish students can now study Kurdish, but North Syria's education system has a lot of catching up to do in the tech field.

In the past six months, North Syria's government has established learning centers across the territory, each providing free tuition in tech and philosophy.

As well as studying code, students work through a reading list of world history and cultural theory, and the works of Kurdish ideologue Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned Kurdish leader who inspired the North Syrian revolution.

The theory helped shape North Syria's governance structure, which consists of communes where people come together to take decisions at a local level.

Women's liberation has been a defining feature of the North Syrian revolution, with women actively encouraged to participate in the region's governance.

Many young people in North Syria have been deprived of an education as a result of the war.

It's also designed to give the young people of North Syria hope in rebuilding their society - something that has been steadily eroded after 8 years of brutal conflict.

Daristan, the electronics student now at the academy, is originally from Afrin, one of North Syria's most vibrant cities before Turkish forces seized it in 2018.