An education website based in Egypt is offering 17,000 free videos to school students needing assistance in the Arab world.

The Nafham website, which was set up in 2012, provides free lectures for students in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Algeria. It has an application that can be downloaded to gain access to the material.

It is a free online educational platform linked to the Egyptian public school curriculum, providing 10 to 20-minute videos for primary and secondary school students. Videos are categorized by grade, subject, topic and school months for easy navigation, according to information on its website.

The e-learning service applies a new concept known as “Crowd-Sourced Teaching.” It relies on teachers, parents, professionals and other students to create simple videos explaining the educational material, the website states.

The site is available for use by community organizations helping the poor, said Mustafa Farahat, chief executive officer of the site. He said the aim is to provide information in an interesting and innovative manner. He claimed 270,000 users visited the site last semester and that the site plans to attract 800,000 by the end of 2014.

So far, the application has been launched for Android devices, with 5,000 downloads since its launch. A new version of the application for other operating systems would be launched soon, he said.

The website organizes contests on a monthly basis for students in collaboration with Intel as a way to motive students to study, he added. Intel provides awards and prizes to the winners, such as laptops and tablets.

Farahat said the program’s administrators are in constant communication with the Ministry of Education and often address meetings to discuss the educational system in Egypt.