Photo © Marc Alan Sperber
Meeting learners where they are
Through local and global programs, ASU meets refugees where they are to offer resources, support, tools and courses to help them prepare for and pursue higher education. This can mean helping a Syrian refugee in Jordan learn English, supporting a Congolese young person in Uganda to develop entrepreneurship skills, or guiding an Afghan nurse through recredentialing in Arizona. ASU is also home for a large number of students who have had to flee their homelands and adjust to a new life in the US. Our faculty and staff and students are working together to make ASU campuses ever more sensitive to the needs of those who have have had their lives and educations disrupted by conflict.
Through research, collaboration with global and local partners, and through outreach, ASU is a leader in refugee education.
Initiatives and Projects
The LEGO Foundation's Play Matters
Funded by the LEGO Foundation and sub-contracted by the United Nations Refugee Agency, ASU's Education for Humanity mapped play-based learning resources to the Ethiopian national curriculum for early childhood education, created instructional design lessons for teachers, and partnered with ASU's SolarSPELL to enable offline delivery in rural refugee camps.
Refugee Health Partnership (RHP)
Refugees face common barriers to accessing healthcare and many service providers are ill-prepared to help. A collaboration between ASU’s School of Social Work, Office of Global Social Work, Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program, International Rescue Committee’s Refugee Resettlement Program, and Dignity Health’s St. Joseph’s Medical Center is working to better understand and improve upon the issues.
Learning and Educating Across Refugee/(Im)migrant Networks (LEARN)
This collaboration between ASU's MLFTC and Childhood Education International brings together refugees, educators, and researchers with those in global and community organizations to research and develop teaching and learning supports for refugee/(im)migrant communities.