Hello, everybody. I think we're going to go ahead and start. We've got a great panel, and we want to use the time that we have.
So I'm Dr. Maria Elisa Christie.
So anyway, I'm at the Center for International Research, Education and Development. Welcome to our Global Development Discussion Series.
Thank you to continuing and Professional Education for co-sponsorship this year.
And we're so happy we could join us today for our very special panel discussion titled: The Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement studies working at the intersection of gender and e
is everybody hearing an echo? Okay, there's all these Leland, are you going to address the things coming in the chat?
Let's see. Is anyone else hearing an echo? Molly is asking, is everybody else hearing echo?
No. Okay. All right. I'm going to continue. Thank you for pointing that out, Molly, and let's see if Leland.
Has anything to say about that, but okay, I'm going to continue.
But now I have the pop-ups coming off on the side, so I can keep going. So we've got three amazing panelists. So first, introduce them in short. Dr. Brett Shadle, Deirdre Hand and Awel Agot Paruar.
Dr. Shadle is Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies.
Deirdre Hand is community engagement specialist for the Center and Awel Agot Paruar is an incoming undergraduate student at Virginia Tech this fall, currently a student in the Elimisha Kakuma in Kenya.
So more on them in a minute. So we're grateful to have you three panelists join us today.
2 from Virginia Tech and one from Kenya. So thank you so much for making time.
I also want to welcome our webinar participants. So as of last night, we had over 50 people registered. So besides students, faculty, and staff from Virginia Tech. We folks joining for many institutions, including I'm just going to name some of them Cranwell Family Foundation, the School for International Training,
The International Rescue Committee, Ohio University. public schools in Galax City and Montgomery County.
Cultural practice, LLC, Carilion and Nosotros Dos Productions. We also have participants from other countries, including from Elimisha Kakuma in Kenya, the Yunnan Agricultural University in China, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
and alumni from Egypt. So welcome to everybody who's able to join.
Now some brief housekeeping notes. If you were on early, you probably caught these in the slides, but this event will last approximately 50 minutes, around 40 minutes for the panel, followed by 10 of 10 of Q&A.
And everybody's muted to enable participants to present without interruption.
you can submit your questions anytime in the Q&A, and we'll read them after the presentation. Alternatively, if you prefer, you can raise your hand in the Q&A, and we will unmute you so that you can ask your question live.
If you'd like to enable captions at the bottom of your Zoom screen, you can select more, and then show captions, and then English. So our event will be recorded, and it will be available on the Center for International Research, Education and Development's website, and also in the library, vtechworks.
So okay, a little more on our speakers,
Brett Shadle is director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies and Professor of African History.
His current research examines the history of Ethiopian refugees along with contemporary aspects of daily life for displaced people and methods of conducting research with refugees. He teaches a spring class that brings together Virginia Tech students and students and Elimisha Kakuma.
producing research reports on education in Kakuma that have circulated widely, Shadle serves as Director of Internal Affairs and as a member of the board for Elimisha Kakuma.
So Deirdre Hand is a community engagement specialist for the Center for Rural Education and the Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies at Virginia Tech.
She's a two-time Virginia Tech alumna with a master's in education and TESOL.
And she co-founded Elemisha Kakuma in Kenya. Deirdre has over 14 years of global ESL teaching experience across eight countries and specializes in refugee education and global college access.
Awel Agot Paruar is a student in Elimisha Kakuma and has been admitted to Virginia Tech for a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics.
Yes, congratulations, and will be joining this fall. Very good. We welcome you in advance.
And In Kakuma she has worked with Lutheran World Federation and FCA (Finn Church Aid), taught at Kadugli Primary School, and is a youth leader in her community. She is dedicated to advancing women’s and girls’ rights, including ending forced marriage and period poverty.
So today, this discussion will provide an overview of the Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies and of Elimisha Kakuma and the efforts and perspectives of an Elimisha Kakuma student, incoming Hokie,
discussing how she perseveres through the education access challenges she faces as a refugee woman. Please welcome our panelists.
And over to you.
Great. Thank you, Marie Elisa. My name is Brett Shadle. I'm director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies.
and we were founded in 2020. So we're in our sixth year. This is our team right now. Just to introduce people quickly. On the left is Vince Malua. He's our graduate student, works with us at the center. He's from Malawi, and
did a great deal of work around arts and arts education in Zaleka refugee camp in Kenya. We have three students here at Tech already from Elimisha Kakuma. She's a first-year student in business.
Next is a second year in econ. Marianne Hawthorne, who's our office administrator. Katie Powell, who was the founding director of our center and is now Senior Research Associate.
And Ajira Ajwang, who's also a second year student at Tech EK alum and intern for the center. I just want to say a little bit about what we do at the Center. Our goal is really to bring together research, teaching, and outreach around various aspects of refugee migration, displacement studies.
We draw on interest and strengths among faculty, staff, and students across Virginia Tech. And there's incredible knowledge and dedication here, and a deep and shared passion for assisting migrant and refugee populations.
I just want to point out a few of our guiding kind of themes and areas.
First, our research, teaching, and outreach all inform one another. So you see the access to higher education in the center of the page.
That is a project that was done by VT students in a class here at Tech in conjunction with Elimisha Kakuma students in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. So it was a class. It was outreach working with students in Alamecia.
And this is one of the publications then that has circulated widely among academics and practitioners, and well is in a similar class this semester with Virginia Tech students.
We approach our work from interdisciplinary perspectives with a humanistic sensibility. So we're very intentionally interdisciplinary, but always deeply informed by our grounding in the liberal arts. So histories, images, words.
Ways of seeing the world are central to understanding migration and displacement. So we have, for example, roots and resettlement, and you see two of the additions here. These are writings and images by migrant and displaced students. The one on the right.
is by former Elimisha Kakuma students. The one on the left should be published fairly soon. It's an edition on Ukraine and was edited by Dr. Olga Nimko. You see there was a displaced scholar and resident here at Tech a couple of years ago.
And she was at the time displaced from Ukraine.
We believe that working with listening to and learning from migrants, refugees, and other displaced populations is both smart and ethical.
Solutions to issues faced by refugees and migrants, solutions imposed from the outside are, as history has shown us, both doomed to fail and are deeply paternalistic. So we'll see about a couple of the examples that I'll talk about, and with Elimisha Kakuma.
We always try to work with the populations that we work with to listen to them and be guided by them.
We believe that narratives have power. The media, humanitarian agencies, politicians, everyday citizens all portray migrants and refugees in ways that don't often reflect reality.
As one former refugee in Kenya put it, and this is a quote from an edited book that's coming out, co-edited by us here at the Center. She wrote, "Refugees are not just victims. We build communities, celebrate culture, and support one another.
While the media focuses on suffering, they fail to capture the strength, ambition, and joy that also define us." So in Roots and Resettlement, in a forthcoming volume called the Critical Displacement Reader, at a recent symposium, and you see the flyer there on the left.
And for some keynote speakers, and then the symposium itself on the right. Where we had a variety of people with backgrounds in migration, in displacement, come and tell their stories. One of the things that we want to privilege is.
people being able to tell their own stories and present their own research about education, about their lives, and not just what the media or large NGOs might tell us about them.
Refugee and immigration education has emerged as one of our primary areas of focus.
Refugee and immigrant populations often place great emphasis on education, both for adults and for children, as a means of improving their daily lives and forging new futures.
Resources for these populations have often been scarce, and this is becoming increasingly the situation as international government and NGO support shrinks.
So with local, national, and international partners, our team's own knowledge of higher education, as we noted, Deirdre's training as a teacher of English to speakers of other languages,
We found a natural convergence between the needs identified by those seeking education and what we have to offer our specialties.
So over the past 5 years and more, we've built a range of partnerships around issues of refugee and immigrant education. One of our premier ones, and Deirdre will speak more and Awel with Elimisha Kakuma.
But we also have VT students volunteering in a range of projects. This year alone we have over 100 Virginia Tech undergraduates volunteering in, for example, there's some of them here. They work as.
tutors in Montgomery County Public Schools working with English language learners with a student group, Primeros Pazos, that we support also with Center for Rural Ed, Virginia Tech students mentor at-risk Latinx students in Galax.
She leads Tomorrow is a project, a refugee run project to assist women in Afghanistan seeking higher education. Blacksburg Refugee Partnership. We have students who go into homes and work with K-12 children who are children of resettled refugees here.
And I want to focus on a little bit more on our partnership with Next Mission. And if, Deirdre, if you could give me the next slide.
So, the Afghan Conversation Project is run in conjunction with women known as FTPs. They're members of the Female Tactical Platoon. So FTPs were women, a special women only unit of the Afghan army.
They trained with and served with U.S. Forces. But when Kabul fell to the Taliban, they had to escape. They would have been targeted by the Taliban for serving with the US military. Around 40 or 50 got out and made it to the US.
Several of them live here in Blacksburg. And so through that, we came into contact with Mana Zakbari, who was their commander in Afghanistan and now lives in the US, and Rebecca Edmondson, who had served with them in the US Army.
And we discussed with them to try to learn what the FTPs needed. And it came through that what they really needed support with were daily English skills, conversational skills, to be able to go to the doctor, to be able to go to the store and communicate effectively.
And this was really important to us that we weren't walking in and telling people what they needed or what the solutions were, but finding out what their needs were and then seeing if we could support them.
So in 2024, the spring of 2024, we set up ACP, the Afghan Conversation Project. And each semester since then, we've had about 15 FTPs each semester, matched with members of the VT community. They hold one hour Zoom meetings. It's very low pressure, low risk to build their
english conversational skills. But we learned along the way that it also turned into more than just learning English, but building relationships. And you'll see here the photos of
Alex Lilly, she and her sister Frankie are heavily involved in CRMDS activity. But here's Alex with Nazdana. They've been partners for conversation partners and friends for over two years, and they've built really deep
relationships, and they've helped one another, they've learned a lot from one another. And this is what we see as one of our missions here at the Center, is to try to collaborate, bring students in, and collaborate with different organizations.
particularly around education very broadly defined. And with that, I'd like to hand it over to Deirdre to tell us more about Elimisha Kakuma.
All right. Can everybody hear me? I think I'm good. My name is Deirdre. I'm a co-founder of Elimisha Kakuma, and that means educate Kakuma in Swahili. Elimisha is a university preparation and access program for students who finished secondary school in Kakuma Refugee camp
who are trying to access higher education. It's a 16-month, very rigorous academic preparation program to help students not only get into universities, but also be successful once they're there.
as I said, I'm one of the co-founders, but really importantly to our organization and to kind of build on what Brett was saying. It's really important that the other 3 co-founders, Mary Maker, Ding Man Yang, and Joseph Dudi Miebach.
who were my former students a long time ago, grew up in the camp. They were where our students are now, and have a deeper understanding and a personal understanding of what our students need of what this program.
needs to be in order to support our students. So it's really important that we follow their lead. It's their organization, and we are support everyone who works and volunteers. I mean, we're all volunteers for them. So a bit of the context is that Kakuma Refugee Camp is in the northwestern part of Kenya.
It's very hot. It's rather desolate. It's a pretty neglected part of Kenya itself. It's desert temperatures, very little to no infrastructure in terms of roads and.
paved roads that is. It was established in 1992 for the so-called Lost Boys. Now it hosts slash warehouses nearly 300,000 people from across Eastern Africa, and even now, actually, folks from Afghanistan.
who were brought in. Refugees are not allowed to freely travel in Kenya. They are not allowed to legally work in Kenya. There are things called incentive jobs for refugees, which are basically.
the same jobs as maybe a Kenyan national could do, but paid at like a 10th of the price. So many of our students, our Elimisha students, when they finish secondary school, they go into the schools, the secondary schools themselves as teachers, and make that stipend, which is about a tenth of what a Kenyan teacher would make in the camp.
But that is the only money that they can make basically most folks in Kakuma are unable to return to their home countries and return is rather a loose term since many of them were born in the camp.
Very few are ever resettled to a third country outside of their home country, and then Kenya into like the US Or Australia. In fact, less than 1% of refugees around the world are ever resettled to a third country. Education is therefore one of the few ways that
that people can gain some control over their lives.
I feel like it's important to talk about the barriers to primary and secondary when getting to higher ed, but I'll just kind of go through pretty quickly the lack of infrastructure healthcare, all the barriers that girls and folks with disabilities, unaccompanied minors face,
the lack of resources. All of this you'll also see when you get to higher ed, but all of these barriers make it really very impressive that our students even not only finish secondary school, but finish with such high grades, because.
Based on all of these barriers, they really shouldn't, and many don't. I think it's maybe 20% of students finish secondary school in Kakama.
Here's just some pictures of our students in the blue visiting some schools to kind of do some motivation and some community service outreach. But these are some schools
in the camp, and some of our students visiting them. Will talk more about the barriers her personal experiences by this, but we all know that girls face even more barriers.
a lot of domestic responsibilities fall to girls. Education is seen often as irrelevant if you know that your daughter's just meant to be married off. There is a lot of early enforced marriage or threats of such sexual harassment, gender-based violence that happens to girls and boys, like, we know that that is
a barrier to all or to many youth. And then therefore hope like just not having hope when you don't see people making it, you don't see people making it out. It can be really hard to think, you know, what's the point, really? These are some pictures from Kakuma that I took the first time I was there. You can see there's a lot of warnings about
how yeah, all of the things I just mentioned. And I'm sorry. I'm speeding through because we don't have a ton of time, but.
Some barriers to higher education and kind of just an extension of all the primary and secondary school is that there's very limited opportunities. In Kenya, you have to have a C+ or above on your Kenyan certificate of secondary education, which is your leaving exam to enter university in Kenya, which is very rare in Kakuma School, as you can see from this, which is a little outdated and I need to update.
But of the nearly 2,500 or 2,700. very few are getting a C+ and above. I won't do the math, because percentages. But also in Kenya, they can't access loans. They cannot work legally. So all of these barriers are just make it harder and harder. So when you finish high school and you have these great grades, what do you do? You're stuck. You go back to the camp, you start teaching, you look for one of the very few positions.
or scholarships abroad. So all of that leads to despair, to depression, to what's the point.
again, extension to women, all of that just expanded, because now there's more pressure to get married because you're older. And why are you even still doing this? There's no point. There's no job, there's no opportunity. So you should get married. The responsibilities, taking care of your family, of your younger siblings or cousins.
All of that just gets increased the older students get.
So into our programming. So we know all this is happening, yet there are amazing, incredible, so many students who do finish secondary school who are ready for higher ed and just need that opportunity. So we connect to work with universities and.
and prepare students not only for that difficult application process, but also to be successful in school. So just a a short note about how difficult it is to even get into Elimisha is that this year we had over 750 students apply.
And we have, I said 16, but I, in fact, we probably will be taking less because of many complicated reasons. Maybe 14. All that to say, it is incredibly difficult. We have, obviously.
there are amazing students that we would love to take, but we don't have the capacity. But, you know, we look for high academics, but we also look for a real strong commitment to community. So the way our programming works is that we prepare them in academics, and they do community service. There's college counseling, and there's mentorship.
In the academic piece, we go for about 16 months. So we start off with, like, very fundamentals, digital literacy, a lot of students haven't used a computer before. Getting into academic writing, critical thinking, a lot of, like, listening and and long form journalism, long reading.
They then head into research, university courses on history, public speaking. Dr. Shadle teaches, obviously, as he mentioned, in the summer, and then also in the following spring.
a university level class, as do some other professors from Virginia Tech and McAllister and other volunteers, including a lawyer who's teaching a philosophy class this year, a neuroscience class.
That's in the summer and in the spring. In the autumn, we really focus on college applications, on all the university essays, on exam preparation, on interview preparation. So it's a pretty intense 16 months. I included this, Brett has shared it with some of our students, trying to walk home from the center the other day, and the the Laga, the seasonal river, flooded.
So that's just a bit of context of how hard they have to work just to even get around in terms of our infrastructure, we have two buildings with intermittent electricity and Wi-Fi, and we do provide our students with a laptop, and we give them a stipend because we ask them to quit those incentive jobs that we mentioned
to be full-time students with us, 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. It's a very rigorous program, and so we need them there all day, all week. And so rather than asking them to give up the very needed funding or salary that they would earn
for their families, we then replace that with the stipend. So we also provide breakfast and lunch, because there's not enough food in the camp. More on that later, and transportation.
Once they get to school, we connect them with host families and continued mentorship. We've had amazing success in terms of the placements that students have gotten into. These are not even all the universities, but
Just to name a few, we've had over 20 million in scholarships that students have earned. They are all giving back. Acon is our first ever Elimisha graduate, graduated from University of Calgary in Canada, and she even founded Kakuma Empowerment Program when she was, like, a freshman.
which is now a huge organization tutoring students in the camp. And that many of our now students were part of. So she's just one example of how, you know, not only our students, when they go on, they still look back, they still are connected to their community, just like Mary Ding and Duty.
Three of our other students at Elmhurst in Chicago have started a fundraiser to try to alleviate the intense starvation that is happening in Kakama due to the USAID cuts. So these are things our students are doing. Obviously, there's always the challenges of our funding and our capacity.
We don't have enough staff or we can't pay stuff because we don't have funding, so we can't take as many students as we know that.
are eligible and ready. Geopolitics I won't go into, but of course all the challenges that exist to learn more. Wow, 10 minutes, 30 seconds.
There's a documentary that we're happy to share about the connection especially between Elimisha and Virginia Tech. You can scan that. And I will pass it off now to Awel, who will share her story.
Thank you so much, Deirdre. Hello everyone! My name is Awel Agot Paruar.
I'm currently a student in Elimisha Kakuma and I'm really honored to be here.
This fall, I will be joining Virginia Tech to
begin my undergraduate studies to pursue a major in nutrition and dietetics.
Today, I want to share my story as a refugee woman navigating the barriers to education access.
Barriers that sometimes do feel, sometimes are invisible to those who are designing education policies, but they are very, very, living to us, those who are living in it. So, I also, I'll also touch about programs like Elimisha Kakuma.
And as a program, and as a hope for refugee women who are trying to pursue education in the camp. And so to you, my listeners, my story will not be unique, because there are thousands of refugee women with similar who are facing similar challenges right now, but I hope that by sharing my experience,
We can better understand what it takes not to just survive through these barriers, but to break through them. So Let me take you through it by describing how those barriers actually look like.
For me, when I finished high school in 2022.
I was happy that I got good grades that will take me to college. But, you know, here in the camp.
Good grades don't automatically means that you will get to college because. There are no clear pathways. We have limited information about the opportunities that are there. We also don't have the support of, like, applying to those processes to join college
And so I, as one of the refugees in the camp who lack opportunities, and even though for the opportunities that are there, I applied, but each morning you wake up and get rejection. Each morning you wake up and get rejection.
And so for me, what I did, I waited like any other refugee.
I spent nearly 3 years of waiting without joining university or college and to any other refugees that those who have stayed for almost five years, but they still have that hope of one day.
They will join university or college. And so for me.
As I wait, there are a lot of challenges as a refugee woman that I face. For me, one of them was pressure for getting married. In our context, when or in our community, South Sudanese lady, and you find that when a girl finishes school, and there's no clear step, you know, marriage become like one of the expected path.
Because especially like you find most of the families are struggling financially, and so that, you find that the only thing that parents will think is to.
accept those who are asking hand in marriage for their daughter, and so I was one of the victims. And it didn't just start when I finished high school, it started a long way when I started actually schooling. And for that, it.
intensify when I finish high school and I stayed for 3 years without joining college. And for that, for me, I felt like I was almost giving in.
But I told myself that maybe if I stay a little longer, there's some hope that we may be coming. So what I did, I joined other initiatives that are here in the camp, like the Kakuma Empowerment program. It's a program that
help teach students who are willing to like, you know, be help. And so most of the refugees are giving back to the community through my empowerment, and it's an initiative that was formed by one of our owns.
And so, I joined and other activities that I did. I was also a teacher. I taught for those years as a volunteer. And so, those engage me, and I found that at least I was hoping that something will happen. And so other challenges that we have, we have a lot of domestic opportunities that are.
Domestic responsibilities that girls in the community or in refugees are doing because, you know, coming back from school, for those who are still in high school, they'll come back and you find that they're supposed to sweep, they're supposed to cook, that they want to sweep the compound, that they want to fetch water.
It's really, really hard for some of them. And also, not only for those who have finished high school, those who are still in high school, but for those who have finished, so you find that the workload and the responsibilities that us women.
have right now is really hard, and you find yourself, like, you know, I think this is the only thing that I'll be doing for the rest of my life, and then most of them give in to, like, get married. And so, for me, for those 3 years, I saw some of the talent, wasted, potential, buried under circumstances that are beyond someone's control. And I can't blame them, because I went through them, and I was almost giving in.
And so what you see there is my timeline
have already explained from 2022 to 2025, that when everything at least changed because I was selected by Elimisha Kakuma and I became a student. And so before I venture into Elimisha Kakuma, I want to tell you that,
You know the timeline might look like something straightforward and but each step.
I'll tell you that it was hard won. Each transition required not just academic preparation for me, but it required emotional resilience. It also required family navigation and family negotiation, because a lot was going on with the families, and it was for me to stand up.
They set me free and so that is what I did. So my timeline will somehow look like it's something straightforward, but no, it was self-own. And so when I got into a Elimisha Kakuma.
A lot have been said by Deirdre, and I will not repeat it, because Elmisha right now is one of the hopes that we have. It has given me a community that has really shaped my perspective on how I view things. And so, Elimisha showed me that my dreams were still achievable.
Because I was almost giving up with the three years waiting. But when I got into Elimishia, it showed me that I was capable, that my dreams were still valid. So like for some people like me and any other person that is in the community. Elimisha is still there to remind you that even though you wait for 5 years, do not give up, because one day, like you will be seen, you will be heard.
And you'll still achieve your dreams. For any girl, any refugee girl who is right now, feeling that he's almost giving up, we still have a lot of opportunities, and they will come when the time is right.
I'll say again, Elimisha did not just give me more than, it gave me more than skills. As I mentioned, it gave me a community of other ambitious refugee students who are with me right now, and sharing our community with them has really shaped my thinking, because.
Every discussion that we have, at the end of the day, we'll sit down and try to rethink whatever you are doing. And for that, I'm really grateful for it. And so one thing that most of the people always ask me is that.
People often ask me, like, I will, how did you keep going when the barriers were really seem very impossible? How did you stay hopeful during these three years, or the years that you spent at home?
But, you know, sometimes the answer is not easy, and it's not simple, because
I do tell people that it's not an individual strength, it's not for my own strength that I kept through those 3 years. It's a multiple source of motivation, working together.
people that I look up to and my own motivation. So number one first I'll say that
For me, I knew deep down that education will one day be the gateway for me to escape all these challenges that I was facing. You know, not just free from forced marriage because, okay, even though it was the main thing, like.
the agent and real at that moment, but to free me, I felt like education was the only thing that will free me from everything that I was going through.
I knew that education will make me make my own choices. Education was the only thing I knew that it will help me define my own future, and to have power over my own life. So I refused to let my circumstances define my potential.
And I knew that the knowledge of knowing that one day.
I'll overcome all this. That one became my anchor. So secondly, I had other refugees that I was looking up to. I saw some of the refugee girls who show resilience.
Who really fought to be where they are right now, even though they didn't go through the same thing that I went through, but I saw them doing exceptional things that really implies that as a refugee woman, you are capable.
And for that, one of those women is Mary Maker, one, our co-founder. And so that one really motivated me. And I knew that if I look up to them, if I continue to look up to them, their resilience will motivate me. And it really does, it motivated me and it showed me that breakthrough who was possible, and even though my path wasn't clear, so I looked up to them, and I think that's the reason why.
Thirdly, you know, sometimes there is a possibility that always comes with being the firstborn or being the first child.
So with the challenges that I went through, I didn't want my siblings to like follow the path that was almost killing my dreams. So, I wanted my siblings to learn from me, learn from the joys that I'm going to make. I wanted to, like, set an example for them to show them that their best effort is always possible, and that their dreams are able, like, they can achieve their dreams.
And despite the challenges that they saw me going through, that one day, if I set this example, they are going to, like, follow the path that I was going that I was making.
And fourthly, and the most important thing as I speak right now.
When I was elected into Elimisha Kakuma, it meant that for me, I felt like at least there is someone who believed in my potential. It meant that someone like Deirdre Hand, someone like Brett Shadle, who is my professor
and the Elemisha co-founders. They didn't just see a refugee girl with barriers. I shared a lot of things during my interviews. And for that I knew that I felt like for them, they didn't just see a girl with barriers.
they saw a girl with capability. A girl with dreams, a girl with promise, and a girl with leadership.
And for that, it's really pushed me and that external belief became internal fuel for me.
I always tell myself that when someone invests in you and believed in you, that one sometimes it's really changed a lot of how you see yourself. And so with that, I moved with the belief that Elemisha Kakum are behind me and I believe that.
My dreams are possible. And so, finally, I'll say that my own determination also pushed me forward, and it's made me believe that.
Whatever I'm doing is possible. If I have people who believed in me, then I let my determination lead me.
So right now, as we speak. I'm really honor to be, like, joining, Virginia Tech.
With the determination that I put in and the community that I had, I was able to get into Virginia Tech.
I'm looking forward to join Virginia because Virginia is full of community that embraces the importance of service. And for me, service has been at the center of my life because I have been doing a lot in the community.
Standing up for girls right, correcting what is, what is not right, and for that, I believe that when I joined Virginia Tech and continue with my education and further my education, I'm going to learn more and I'm really, really going to drive in Virginia. And so for me to conclude.
Today, I know there are a lot of refugees, women who are going through the same thing that I went through. And for that, there are refugee women, girls who are also watching me today. So I'll tell you that.
I know sometimes it feels like. I know how it feels to face the barriers that seem impossible to overcome, barriers that make you question your worth sometimes, question your dreams, and your future. Barriers that sometimes make you wonder if education is really for you.
Or it's for those with resources, connections and privileges, because that's how I used to ask myself, because I felt like I don't even deserve to, like, go to school because it seemed out of reach. But I want you to hear this from someone who have.
gone through all the challenges, someone who believe that you can make it.
I want to tell you that we are strong. You are strong than any obstacle that is in your way. And education.
Hope and perseverance are the only tools that you might need right now. Keep on with whatever you are doing, be it the community service that you are providing, be it teaching in a class that
student at the back can't hear you know that one day it will pay off.
And one thing that I always feel is like I wish someone had told me during those three years of waiting that my voice really matters.
that my dreams also matters. And I'll tell you today, you don't miss that person, because I'm here to tell you.
Just know that there is someone who is listening to you, and there is a lot of people outside there who are willing to hear your story as long as you use your voice well.
And for that. As Mary said, our co-founder, that educating a girl will create equal and stable societies and educated refugees will be the hope for rebuilding the country some days. Now that she's speaking to you directly.
And to all the listeners. She's urging us to, like, put hands together and embrace the change that these young women are dying for.
So for that have taken a lot of time. So thank you so much for your patience.
So panelists, how do you want to proceed? Do you want to have a conversation around that? We still have 15 min. You can just leave me 1 min for the closing.
So maybe you want to have some comments among yourselves. I'm not sure if we have any questions.
I didn't see any questions in the chat. But the plan was for you all to comment on that, and that was just the most amazing talk.
Yeah, you can see how incredible our Elimisha Kakuma students are. How much they go through to pursue their education and how much they give back all along the way. So.
It was incredible, as usual. Sorry, we've come to expect that from you, but it's still great every time.
Yeah, I don't know if anyone. I don't see questions coming in anywhere, but I don't know. Oh, yeah, there's a Q&A house. Oh, there's a question. Oh, yeah. Go ahead.
Maybe anyone with questions?
Do you see? There's one that says, how supportive were your family and your aspirations? There's a question for you, Awel.
Yeah, thank you. So, as I said earlier, You know, the situation that we are in.
For me, I felt like the only person who stood with me in this journey was my mother. But for my father.
He's a man of that also. What you want was like, me as a daughter to get married and, like, get married well, because he was coming with men with, wealthy men, so they were, like, very old. So, I'll say that, a part of my family was supportive.
There's someone else. What is the source of funding for this wonderful program?
Yeah, we kind of pod it together. It started off with a lot of family donation. Shout out to the Brennan family. And. Friends, family, GoFundMe, basically. Now, it still is a lot of individual donors.
We are very, very grateful for the support of the Cranwell Family Foundation, and that is the reason why we can have students at Virginia Tech. So that's been a huge support to Elimisha Kakuma, who supporting our center, our elementary students to the center, and also Elimisha separately from Virginia Tech. Brett's just shared the the donate page. But that is a a big way that we.
get money. We have some fundraisers throughout the year that Mary Maker, who is a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and one of the co-founders who you've heard us talk about hosts. She's our fundraiser.
Brett, Mother. I'm sure I'm missing, but I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, it really is. It's kind of pulling together money from a whole variety of of places, because it is difficult. We say that it takes a lot of money to run the program. But there's a huge payoff. You know, it takes.
Money for Wi-Fi in the camp. You know, we provide our own Wi-Fi, we have to have solar panels there, and, you know, we provide transportation so that students don't always have to walk back and forth. You know, things and then there are other.
expenses that come up flights to the US. Visa application fees, traveling to Nairobi to apply for things, helping students get set up. So there's a lot of expenses that go with it. Always worth it. But it really is just trying to find from all kinds of different sources.
There's a question from Gera. Hello, Gera. We're glad you're here. He says, Thank you so much, considering the large number of applicants. Do you have a plan to expand your intake?
That kind it goes back to funding, I would say, unfortunately.
We are mainly volunteer. I work full-time at Virginia Tech, as does Brett. The other co-founders as well have other jobs, so we none of us, we've only been able to hire for the first. we have a facilitator on the ground in the camp.
named Kiza, and we have a security guard. Other than that, we've not been able to hire until last year when we hired Annika Brennan, who is our program manager and lives, based in Nairobi. But other than her, we aren't really able to support staff, and what we're realizing is that.
We just, after now almost 6 years, it's not a sustainable model. So we are still trying to figure out how to continue with it being on the side of all of our jobs like this. This work does require full-time commitment, and it.
Unfortunately, financially is not in the cards at the moment, but we are hopeful. I think people are noticing that it's working. They're meeting our incredible students. They're like, wow, yes. So I do. you know, we are way further along financially than we ever were at the beginning. So, you know, there's hope, but I would say without a serious increase in funding, we just don't have the capacity to manage
that many students, and not to mention with the geopolitics of the moment, it being harder for universities to take chances on students that might not get a visa, and just so many complications. But we know that we are under.
We know there are so many more students in Kakuma that are.
more than qualified and would be incredible Elimisha students, and we don't have the capacity for all the ones that we would like to take, which is actually really heartbreaking.
Yeah. So I just want to point out to everyone. Both you see in the chat, as Judy pointed out the link to our donate page. But also the Cranwell Family Foundation is matching donations this year up to 25,000. So please consider.
donating through there. And Wilma, do you have your hand up? I think if you can unmute, if you'd like to say something.
Hi, Wilma.
You're still muted, Wilma, if you want to. Yeah.
I think we have to unmute her. Let's see. Leland, are you going to unmute her? Are you there?
She's allowed to talk. She has to unmute themselves though.
Can you hear us, Wilma?
We know Wilma's in Kakama, so she might not have the best reception.
But we know she's also awesome. So I hope if you can't talk, maybe you can type.
In the meantime, there are more questions. I don't know if we just want to.
Yeah, let's go ahead.
Does VT offer financial aid for students who are refugees?
No, it's the short answer. Brett? And I don't want to spend too much time on it. But yeah.
No, so there's nothing specific. Yeah. other than other than our connection with the Cranwell Family Foundation. There's also issues for refugees, such as a will who's coming in. She comes in as an international student. So it's much more expensive than domestic students. There had been a program where students could come and go through the refugee resettlement program.
That program is no longer exists, but that would have provided students to come here as under in-state tuition, which was more manageable. So we do have a couple of students here who are on various kind of small scholarships cobbled together.
Like kind of on one-off situations.
The question around. Funding cuts and immigration restrictions to support refugees around the world, and even inside the Us. Especially to get higher education. What can be alternative strategies to support women and girls in countries where they don't have access to higher education?
Do we mean alternative strategies to support them in accessing or alternative strategies to support them?
Instead of higher ed, I'm not sure if I had what do you?
I think I think it also maybe goes with the the next question, which is about virtual learning.
And there are a lot of those in different spots in Kakuma, Southern New Hampshire University has a program there, the Jesuit worldwide Learning has a program for virtual learning. Part of the issue with those those programs, and they're great, and they provide, I think, a really important service.
Part of the issue is that people finish those programs, and they remain in the camp, and they remain with very limited employment opportunities. And so they're very valuable, but being able to go abroad and access different kinds of resources, potentially open up new opportunities that do not involve.
you know, living in a refugee camp, I think, are critical. So you're right that, I mean, in the changing world right now, movement is more difficult than it was before. But as much as possible, we, you know, getting out of the camp.
But still giving back to the camp in different ways is an important goal for a lot of people.
And I will say we are working on expanding connections to countries outside of the US. We it we started with the US. Because it's what we know. It's the system we know, and the experiences I've had. And you know, with Mary Ding and duty having gone through it.
But we are, we have some students in the UK and Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic. Our first student will be going to Italy this coming fall. So we are looking every
You know, all the time to expand it. It's a little trickier in other countries, and especially in Europe, because while it's cheaper, it still costs, so they don't provide the full scholarships that a lot of private universities here face. But we are looking for sure.
Um, let them know that if they already have a first degree, it is easier for them to get GTA funding for graduate students in the U.S. That is such a great point, and that's actually something we were just talking about, like, 2 days ago, that, you know, we are undergraduate focused, but we have had.
We know a couple of folks who have finished undergrad through those online programs in the camp.
And it is a lot easier in that kind of master. So we haven't gone there yet, but it's important, I think, of big barrier that I didn't mention maybe, but is actually just access to information. And I think that's a piece that maybe a lot of folks don't know. So that piece of information is helpful.
Wilma, do you want to try again?
Come on, Wilma.
Hi, can everyone hear me?
Yeah. Yes, we can.
Okay, thank you so much for the presentation. The first presentation was amazing, and thank you, well, for your hard work, your determination.
I know it's not easy being into all these challenges, but you're there to be very, very strong, and we are looking forward to having such kind of motivational speaking, because we find that most of the time, girls growing up in Kakuma without knowing who to.
No direction, and no one even to bother what is happening. But any initial growth are different. Yeah, when you look at those here, students, and they will be able to look at how best they can be able to support. And thanks so much.
animation for bringing such kind of education system where.
Someone is hard. When you look at back then in our school, you were in a crowded place. Nobody talks to you in the school again. You go back home, there's a lot of challenges.
My question is, From the Virginia Tech, do they accept any other student request from Elimisha? Like, we have, from let's say from Elimisha or any other student.
Outside, apart from Elimisha, who are doing very amazing in community service, maybe they are co-founders, they are founders of their initiative, or they have done a lot of community work, maybe service in terms of, uh.
Things to do with health, empowerment, educational advocacy, so do they also look at what kind of students outside in terms of empowering them into the kind of motivational speakers like the way we are in right now in this kind of seeds?
Or what do they do for them? So that can be at least someone to show up, what do I do?
And what support do I need, and how am I supposed to be?
I think I think we only have minute Wilma. I'm so sorry.
I think we only have one minute, so maybe we'll just try and answer that real quick. If I understood, I think you were saying.
Brett or no. I don't know if. Oh. Okay.
Yep. Yeah, go ahead. So actually, Wilma, I think we can also connect offline. We know where to find you. But yes, so it's in a good way.
Good question.
It really depends on the application, I think schools look at different things, but the kind of stuff that people do in Kakuma, the kind of outreach and.
UT Prosim, right, is important here. So doing that kind of outreach, that kind of community service is really important at Virginia Tech and elsewhere.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, so much for for coming. I know Maria, Elisa, I don't know if you were going to wrap us up, but yeah, thank you. Yeah.
Yes. Hi. I'm trying to put the things in the notes, because it's because people are leaving, but just want to say thank you, everybody. We're going to send. You're going to get a survey tomorrow. It's really important to us, because.
It helps us keep this program going. So check our website. My grad student, is going to put in some information to our website. And I want to say that the next speaker is on April 23rd. It's Dr. Cheryl Doss, a professor of economics at Tufts University and a very respected gender and development expert.
Her talk is, does women's empowerment mediate household food insecurity in the event of shocks? Evidence from Ethiopia. So please register to join our Zoom webinar.
And thank you so much, panelists, for wonderful presentations, for all your work. And we'll stay in touch. Thank you, participants as well.
Great. Thank you, everybody.
Thanks for having us.