Training teachers in one of the world’s largest & longest-running settlements
The collaborative program designed by UBC Faculty of Education with global partners has graduated 300+ teachers
From left: Dr. Jackson Too, Moi University, Dr. Samson Nashon, UBC, and Dr. Rita Irwin, UBC: Program co-leads at the Kenya Dadaab Refugee Camp (photo: Samson Nashon)
Picture a refugee camp with a half a million people. Like a sprawling city of sorts, it houses four camps, including businesses, elementary and secondary schools, shopping centres, hotels and restaurants. That’s the Dadaab refugee camp of northeastern Kenya, a UNHCR base, and one of the largest such settlements in the world. More than half of its inhabitants are school-age children; most come from Somalia.
UBC’s Dr. Samson Madera Nashon and colleagues wondered back in 2009, how do you educate high school-age kids living in such conditions? How do you empower them to apply for a university degree, move out, secure permanent housing elsewhere and find gainful employment? Those were some of the formidable quandaries this group of ambitious educators from four institutions pondered as they joined forces to collaborate across continents. Together they created a program designed by the UBC Faculty of Education—coordinated by Dr. Samson Nashon and Dr. Rita Irwin—in collaboration with global partners.
Sixteen years later, some 300 refugee camp residents have graduated with a teaching degree from the camp. It took two years for Dr. Nashon, Department Head and Professor of Science Education in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the UBC Faculty of Education, and the team to develop a two-year Diploma in Teacher Education-Secondary. That was in collaboration with Kenya’s Moi University and other partners in the Dadaab refugee camp. One graduate even founded a school in Somalia in 2017, illustrating the program’s lasting community impact.
Read the full featured story by the Office of Global Engagement