During the past through months, I have been a part of Amala, a global high school that aims to provide refugees with quality education. Although I have been part of Amala for my whole high school experience, I felt that undoubtedly this year has been one of our most challenging years. Despite the hardships and unexpected obstacles, we’ve still been able to accomplish a myriad of things in the past few months. I haven’t only been able to help new students that have joined our focus group, but I’ve also been able to cultivate leadership, communication, and collaboration skills throughout the way.
One of the biggest challenges was that my focus group encountered was the unexpected cancelation of our application process due to the sudden transition to online learning, therefore we were not able to recruit new members to the HS Amala focus group. Since we were already a small group, recruiting more individuals was an essential step in expanding our focus group and raising more awareness about Amala. However, we were fortunate enough to get in contact with the service office and recruit students that just entered high school to our focus group. I believe that having more passionate individuals be a part of our focus group, doesn’t only allow us to reach out to other grade levels and raise awareness about Amala, but it also allows us to gain new perspectives and ideas when planning for future events.
In the first few months we focused more on learning more about refugee education, I felt that this really helped me to broaden my understanding of different refugee crisis. I specifically looked into the Eritrean humanity crisis. I learned that such refugee crises’ that occur globally impact a vast number of individuals and should not be overlooked. For instance, the main reason for the Eritrean humanity crisis was to avoid conscription to the forced national service that all Eritrean men and women must complete. This crisis led to a severe shortage of food and basic goods, as so much money and manpower are devoted to the military.
We also needed to view the ethical implication of the refugee crisis as the UN report, which states that the Eritrean government may be guilty of crimes against humanity, casts a harsh light on some of these root causes in one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. Are such violent behaviors towards refugees really ethically correct? Despite the position that they hold, I believe that they are still all human and deserve to be treated with the same dignity as everyone else.
Although by being part of the HS Amala focus group, I’m not able to directly provide help towards refugees, I believe that by raising awareness about the different refugee crisis and highlighting the importance of refugee education toward students at UWC. This will not only spur change within the perspectives people have about refugees but will also influence others to seek out for different methods to support refugee education.
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