Sazzad Hossain, the founder of the social enterprise SDI Academy, also visited to share his experience with Migrant Workers in Singapore and what he is doing to promote social inclusion. So far, this group has trained 500 migrant workers in Singapore, and they are currently expanding the social enterprise beyond Singapore to Syrian refugees in Germany and Rohingya Refugees. They are also currently working to develop the skills of refugees and migrant workers to enable them to sustain...

Dr Hakim Young is a Singaporean who has been working in Afghanistan for 15 years. Today he spoke about his work in conflict zones and his mission to end war Don't ever let our education or any ideology or any sociology interfere with what we all understand in our hearts that we should treat everyone as equal, treat them without violence. Currently, there are 65.6 million people who have been forced from their homes, and now live in places that they can not call home. Dr Hakim told us a story...

Sky School is a new initiative here at UWC. It was founded by Polly Akhurst and Mia Eskelund who are alumni from a different UWC. Sky School aims to give refugees an education, and our focus is the Syrian refugees living in Jordan, particularly those around the ages of 16-24, as they are the refugees who didn't get to finish their high school education or even start it. This links to the fourth sustainable development goal (quality education). Globally, 63,000,000 adolescents are not at school...

Check out this video on the day so far! #UWCwithRefugees

We are incredibly lucky to have Joy Haugen, UWCSEA Service Department, originally from South Sudan to talk about her experience being a refugee. She grew up in a refugee camp after moving there when she was 6 years old to support her grandmother. Recently, Joy visited her Grandmother once more, who had recently been relocated to the same refugee camp, due to the resurgence of the Sudanese Civil War. She highlighted the deteriorating living conditions of the refugees at the camp. Water is now...

A central focus for this 'World Refugee Day' is considering the action we can take to improve the conditions of refugees and help in remedying the number of human rights refugees. The question remains, what is UWC as a movement doing about it? As of now, 5% of current UWC IB scholarship students come from refugee backgrounds or from groups of people forcibly displaced. 100 scholars each year = $7.5 million per year. The UWCSEA Kay Everett Scholarship Fund - Kay, class of '91 was a humanitarian...

Mathilda Ho is our first guest speaker of the day. She is the founder of Advocates for Refugees - Singapore, a Facebook group which also aims to bring awareness to the issue of refugees. She founded the group after speaking to a Rohingya person, asking what she could do to help. His response was three words long: Share our stories. After establishing the group, Mathilda faced the issue of a lack of knowledge within the public they have this very skewed perception of what refugees are...

Check out the Live Stream of our World Refugee Day Event!

An integral part of this event is a live video taping we do. Students from Grades 1 to 11 record their messages throughout the day, communicating their empathy for the plight of these groups being forced to migrate by famine or violent conflict. The nature of these as videos, as opposed to text, makes the experience more honest - the first thoughts that come to your head are the ones that will be sent. This is in contrast to doctored and endlessly edited messages from states and newspapers,...