Building Resilient Higher Education Spaces for Displaced Populations

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Resources featured in this webinar

• Presentation Slides from this webinar

The number of refugees and displaced persons around the world is the largest in history. Refugee youth in particular have extremely limited options in conflict and crisis zones. At the same time, rapid advances in technology and online learning have laid the foundations for making higher education opportunities accessible for refugee youth.

Education in Emergencies responses have traditionally focused on primary education? higher education opportunities have often been perceived as a luxury. However, in 2015 the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, thereby broadening the education mandate to include lifelong learning, giving these refugee youth a larger opportunity for higher education.

In this session, you will hear about InZone, an academic center at the University of Geneva, focused on building higher education spaces in refugee contexts. InZone partners with UN agencies, NGOs, private sector companies, and higher education institutions to design, implement, and scientifically validate learner-centered and technology-supported pedagogical models. These partnerships empower refugee students to participate in formal and non-formal higher education across different disciplines, and to use technology to develop R&D projects in the field of public health, human rights and administration of justice, engineering and the arts.

The webinar will feature two UNIGE-InZone projects:

Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan
InZone’s Higher Education Space launched in 2016 in the Azraq refugee camp is supported by HP with two HP Learning Studios, equipped with hardware and software. It comprises five complementary initiatives around InZone’s core package of blended courses on global health, global poverty, global history, human rights, children’s rights, and ethics.

Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya
The refugee-run InZone Learning Hub is at the heart of the InZone higher education space serving the Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement. Launched in 2014 as the InZone MOOCs4Peace Center, it is entirely refugee managed. It operates 10 work stations as well as 10 Raspberry Pi CEEDs and offers formal learning, including several degree programs.

Key takeaways

• A guide and program design for setting up higher education spaces and learning ecosystems in refugee contexts;
• Research and recommendations for fostering refugee ownership and empowerment for ensuring the sustainability of HE spaces in fragile contexts and for fostering creativity and innovation;
• Partnership opportunities.

Moderator

Leila Toplic, No Lost Generation Tech Task Force, NetHope

Speakers

	Barbara Moser-Mercer, Director, UNIGE-InZone
	Ellen Jackowski, Global Head of Sustainability Strategy & Innovation, HP
	Paul O’Keeffe, Postdoctoral researcher, UNIGE-InZone
	Innocent Ntumba Tshilombo, IT lead, InZone Refugee Management Team in Kakuma

Collateral

• Building_Resilient_Higher_Education_Spaces_for_Displaced_Populations_Presentation-Slides.pdf

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