As the recent events in Ukraine and Afghanistan have shown, the number of refugees grows every year and today there are now more than 80 million displaced people around the world. It is often young people who bear the heaviest burden of displacement. As they get uprooted, their education is disrupted and future dreams are shattered. Five years ago, two UWC alumni, Polly Akhurst and Mia Eskelund Pedersen founded the organisation Amala to solve a growing, global problem: the lack of high-quality education available to young people who are displaced.
Amala has created the first international high school diploma programme for young refugees and offers transformational non-formal educational programmes in countries hosting large refugee populations including Jordan, Kenya, Greece and Malaysia. UWCSEA has been a committed partner since Amala’s founding, as staff, students and parents and supported Amala’s mission through curriculum development, providing expertise, volunteering, fundraising and raising awareness.
In this session, Polly and Mia will talk about their experiences of setting up Amala, the power of education in creating peaceful and sustainable futures in refugee communities and present on the future of their collaboration with UWCSEA and how the UWCSEA community can get involved.
