Abstract
How can institutional infrastructures of campuses be leveraged to provide educational access to college-age refugees during disruptive natural calamities? While COVID-19 adversely affected thousands of activities around the world and created opportunities for political leaders to restrict individual rights, the pandemic also created unique opportunities for higher education institutions to promote education by virtually connecting students with populations living in remote and hostile areas, such as refugee camps. This paper describes the efficacy of an educational exchange program that was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to engage students in the United States with refugees living in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. As classes shifted online in spring 2020, we created a program to provide college level educational opportunities to people experiencing forced migration, while also engaging US students with the affected population. In a partnership between a student-led non-governmental organization called Refugee Outreach Collective and Central Michigan University (CMU), we launched a virtual education program called Global Classroom that allows refugees living in Dzaleka to enroll in college-level courses at CMU and to share their lived experiences and engage with US students, creating an international student community. A total of 330 students, including 94 refugees, have successfully participated in this program so far, suggesting that innovative programs can help provide higher education access to forcibly displaced persons, even in the face of disasters such as a pandemic.
Presenters
Prakash AdhikariProfessor, Political Science, Central Michigan University, Michigan, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Education and Learning Worlds of Differences
KEYWORDS
Forced Migration, COVID-19, Global Classroom, Malawi
