Educate 60 Refugee Children in Camps

Dear Patrons, Friends, and Family,

At the end of last year, the first Global Refugee Forum in Geneva ended the decade by translating the principle of international responsibility-sharing into concrete action. Looking at the rising number of refugees and the specific pledges made by the forum, we are very proud to have a solid educational plan rooted in values and integrity.

Looking over the last decade, the response to refugees has been slow and unreliable. Refugees are often cut off from the social and economic life in their hosting communities, marginalizing the sharing responsibility.

As the new decade dawns, 23,000 refugees have settled in the US – and it’s time to reboot our responses to this population.

At Education Unbound, we are championing this reboot by building the support to rally behind these extraordinary efforts and accelerate and expand them as we move into a new decade.

The initiative to start with only ONE organization has trailblazed into four others because the need is so great, and thousands of refugees wait to be part of STEAM education and enrichment for a more promising future.

With our practical plan to train staff and provide enrichment programs for sustainability and continuity, we thank you for being part of this journey.

Today, we are delighted to report we have launched our new pilot program bringing after-school STEAM enrichment to 25 refugee children, in partnership with NuMinds Enrichment, an innovative provider of engaging, mixed-age STEAM programs. Over the course of the next 3 months, students in grades 6, 7, and 8 will challenge themselves with mixed-age STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math) programming.

As you may recall from my last update, we’ll be doing this crucial work with PAIR (Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees) administering the program. PAIR empowers youth to navigate American society, reach their academic potential, and ultimately become community leaders.

In a traditional classroom, students aren’t exposed to the same learning opportunities afforded in a high-quality, subject-integrated STEAM Enrichment program. For refugee students in particular, exposure to experiential learning can allow a full engagement, because the teaching is aimed at the whole child. This also means for refugee children, who are contending with trauma, reigniting a passion to learn and cultivating a stronger belief in themselves can ultimately develop character traits closely associated with positive, long-term outcomes.

These traits, which include resilience, divergent thought, mental flexibility, critical thinking, emotional and social awareness, collaboration, and creativity, are often hailed for success in 21st-century jobs and are likely a crucial difference in the long-term outcome for many of refugee children today.

Of course, these children are grappling with more than just a need to excel in future careers – they’re struggling to overcome severe trauma, discrimination, and abuse, which means it takes the right kind of support to engage the students.

In our pilot’s after-school enrichment, students will Count Down to 2030, and ask themselves exhilarating questions, such as:

Who flies the rocket that takes your family to Lunar Disney World?
Who is the referee for zero gravity soccer?

In the spring, while school is on break, 50 students will be invited to take a Spring Brain Break--a program that reignites passion, play, and problem-solving that fuels their curiosity with classic games - but on an epic scale - and brain-teasing problems with a twist.

Looking beyond the pilot, our next task is to kick off a longitudinal study to examine the link between educational enrichment in childhood and well-being in adulthood for refugee people. Through observations and assessments from teachers and students involved in the program, we will, in collaboration with PAIR, observe how baseline performance indicators change over time.

We believe the study will highlight what we passionately declare: access to quality enrichment just may be the most cost-effective way to challenge inequity.

We continue to be deeply grateful for your donation and ongoing belief in this crucial work. Thank you for supporting refugees and Education Unbound’s work to help provide educational enrichment for a better future. Enjoy the energy and smiles as you browse through these pictures.

Kindly share with family and friends who would like to support refugee children: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/uprooted/

Don’t hesitate to reach out, I would love to hear from you!

Warmest Regards,

Weeda Hamdan & Team

Director

Education Unbound

• GGReportMarch172020.docx (DOCX)

"... I also saw a fundamental human trait: the will to kindness: Acts of compassion, the impulse of one person to help another in trauma – these are among the essential hallmarks of humanity and inspired my day here and in the past." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

 Dear Supporters,

This week, The Global Refugee Forum is taking place in Geneva with a focus on translating international responsibility into concrete action. You are a part of that concrete action! It is with great pleasure that I share with you how your generosity will soon impact lives. 

After considerable outreach and vetting, we have secured a partner organization that will ensure every dollar donated goes directly to changing the lives of refugees. The following glosses our efforts and highlights the organization with whom we are partnering starting February 2020. 

DALLAS
We began our vetting process in the Dallas area, and during our search, identified the following non-profit organization:

• Heart House is an organization that serves refugees and underprivileged children in Vickery Meadow, one of Dallas's prominent immigrant and refugee communities. Many of Vickery Meadow's 53,000 residents are immigrants and refugees, and of that population, 5,300 are younger than six, and 3,932 are between the ages of six and thirteen. More than one third (39%) are considered "asset poor." Heart House serves children from various backgrounds and ethnicities that genuinely reflect the community in which we operate. Heart House offers summer camp programs in seven locations, and we project to finalize an agreement before the end of Spring 2020 to support their efforts. 

While we are excited about the potential partnership with Heart House in the summer of 2020, we continued our search for a partner to deliver educational programs in the immediacy. However, we soon discovered that Dallas churches and organizations have fewer refugees due to the strict border security regulations enacted by our current administration. To find the right partner, we expanded our search to include cities located closer to the Texas-Mexico border (e.g.--Houston, San Antonio). 

HOUSTON 
We were able to network with three Houston nonprofit organizations to support youth who are living as refugees:

• PAIR (Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees) empowers youth to navigate American society, reach their academic potential, and ultimately become community leaders.

• The Alliance works to create opportunities for refugees, immigrants, and underserved residents to achieve their goals for self-sufficiency and improve their overall quality of life.

• Texas Refugee Center, Houston (Refugee Services Texas) provides resettlement services to refugees and other displaced peoples through an affiliation with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. They have assisted more than 1,300 refugees and are now seeking to create a youth educational program.

Of the three Houston partners, we have identified PAIR as the ideal recipient for this first outreach because of its established infrastructure. PAIR currently works within three schools, they have access to the necessary transportation, and they have a staff who is eager to learn our educational program and establish long-term sustainability. 

NEXT STEPS
Thanks to your generous donations ($12,825), we are able to partner with PAIR beginning February 2020. The Pilot Program will begin in February 2020 as afterschool STEAM enrichment (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math), serve 25 sixth, seventh, and eighth-graders, and continue for three months. This also includes two opportunities for a Spring Break Camp--allowing 50 students each day the opportunity to engage in playful learning. 

We believe that exposure to high-quality, subject-integrated STEAM Enrichment provides learning opportunities not found in the traditional classroom and that students who engage in such programs show an increase in character traits most-closely associated with long-term gains. Among these traits include resilience, divergent thought, mental flexibility, critical thinking, emotional and social awareness, collaboration, and creativity. During the program, we will be collecting non-invasive quantitative and qualitative data including teacher observations and administered surveys.

After the three months, PAIR's staff will be trained, and for a nominal membership fee, the enrichment program will be able to continue with support from Education Unbound and NuMinds Enrichment. Finally, through PAIR's collaboration with Rice University, it is our intention to form a research group to form a longitudinal study--measuring the correlation between the support they receive and their overall well-being as they grow into adults. Please see the attached proposal and project timeline.

We are beyond appreciative of your donation and for the continued confidence in this critical work. In the spirit of the work being done in Geneva and the sense of duty which binds us, here’s to finding a brighter future for children living as refugees. 

THANK YOU!

Happy Holidays to you and your wonderful families,

Weeda Hamdan and Education Unbound Team

• PAIR__Proposal_for_Services_Uprooted.pdf (PDF)