“City of Thorns”
23 June 2016
On 17th June, UWC International welcomed well over one hundred guests to the event “City of Thorns – Inside the World’s Biggest Refugee Camp” featuring former Human Rights Watch researcher Ben Rawlence as guest speaker.
The event, generously hosted and supported by Deloitte in their London headquarters, aimed to raise awareness about refugees and to discuss how UWC can concretely support the education of young refugees with special scholarship programmes.
Participants, including UWC alumni, donors, representatives of UWC national committees and supporters, listened to Ben talk about his experience in Dadaab, North Kenya, the biggest refugee camp in the world where he spent almost five years. Ben shared his findings, documented in his newly published book “City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp” and, through the stories of some of Dadaab’s inhabitants, he helped to give a name and a face to the reality of the refugee crisis. In his experience, people in Dadaab live with a constant struggle to actively choose hope and find something to believe in – the past being too traumatic and the future too intangible. In this context, educationplays a major role in driving young people and their families’ hopes, ambitions and actions towards a better future. And that is mainly done thanks to the efforts of WUSC, a Canadian NGO that every year reserves 20 scholarships for 10 boys and 10 girls from Dadaab to attend university in Canada. Far from benefiting only 20 young people, this learning and life opportunity has become a key driver for all refugee kids who put all they have into their primary and secondary education with the hope of being selected to study and live in Canada.
The event also saw the participation of two members of the UWC Syrian National Committee. Dima Mekdad works in London as a Research Analyst in the biotechnology sector and has been volunteering for UWC for the last years since she so passionately believes into the positive change a UWC education can bring to young people from Syria. In light of the current war in Syria, the national committee conducts all its work online to secure the safety of its volunteers and all students applying. They have therefore developed tools which enable them to conduct all activities online, from the promotion to the interview and selection of the students, including coordinating with their dispersed team across many different countries and time zones. “The other day, at work, I had to drink many cups of tea to stay awake. My colleagues assumed that I simply had a rough night. In reality, I woke up at 4:00 am to Skype with the other members of the national committee”, she said. And when asked why she does it, she explained that the reason lies in the letter that Marwan Safar Jalani, a Syrian refugee student at UWC Mostar, recently wrote to them:
"Identity is an uneasy concept to find, especially when we lose it with the loss of lands. A homeland is what we tie our identity to, but if the gates of a homeland are suddenly closed, where can a 15-year-old boy find his identity? Central Cairo, a polluted Nile island, the deep bark on the trunk of an ancient tree attracted my eyes. If the tree could become prosperous and beautiful despite the filth and waste of central Cairo, then the rootless boy in me can make it through the hardships of displacement and emigration. In this tree and after four years of civil war, the boy can find his true identity and homeland. Summer 2012, I was awoken in Damascus by the sound of bullets, massive explosions and the cheers of a victorious neighbourhood. The first helicopter in the capital fell by the arms of the rebels marking the beginning of an opaque story. I could hear the giant suitcases rolling on the broken asphalt of the streets of Damascus. Every deep hole on the walls marked the loss of a Syrian life. The van was launched on the way to Beirut, and the Lebanese-Syrian borders were closed behind me. The unfair separation began when my father stayed in Beirut and the rest of us left for Cairo. Mother had strength, from which my identity began to form. October 2012, the UNHCR officer called out my name, handed me a yellow card and told the 15-year-old boy inside me: “you are a refugee, and the All Saint’s Cathedral of Cairo will give you the scholarship to continue your education in English” I was thankful, but the boy inside me was crying. He was still imprisoned in Syria, behind the Lebanese borders. Damascus was a memory, where the boy drowned and happiness could be eternal and immortal. I had to take a step further, because the life I had had before was never coming back. I flipped the white pages and read the dark lines of Arabic literature. Language was the only shelter I found, and poetry was the tool to draw a new homeland. At the same time, my hands were quivering by the burden of war, my fingers venting through poetry about homeland, sorrow and longing. The United World College (UWC) knocked on my door in Cairo, but the winds of rejection blew to teach me determination, a quality that the Nile tree had established in me. July 2013, I heard the victorious cheers again, announcing a second phase of displacement. The voices of Egyptians were heard and the regime fell. It meant that Syrians had to leave the country, and Turkey was the only welcoming nation in which we sought refuge. From Istanbul to Ankara, I heard the sounds of war which my poetry could not escape. I heard the voices of Syrian families in the back of the bus. I was not alone, and every smile I received from every friend, Syrian or Turk, started to mean more and more to me. Turkey, with its people, taught me simplicity, peace and modesty because I learned how to appreciate the people around me. The loudness of the determined voices started to rise again after one year, to inform me that UWC was behind the corner and Mostar would be my home. Mostar, September 2015. What was inside me was not a boy anymore. He had grown up. He left the borders after he had announced that I had found my homeland. I found my identity with the people around me, with determination and patience derived from both Turkey and Egypt, from my mother’s strength and the loudness of voices inside me. The boy was no longer trapped behind the identification of the Syrian national borders, because homeland and identity will never be erased by conflict or discrimination. And only because of war do I know that”.
Finally, the evening was an opportunity for members of the UWC community to reflect upon how UWC can provide increased support to refugees. UWC has been committed to supporting refugees in many different ways for years, including providing scholarships to refugee students and UWC schools and colleges being actively engaged with local refugee initiatives. Now, UWC as a family of schools and colleges has committed to greatly increase its capacity to support students from refugee backgrounds as part of a number of UWC Refugee Initiatives. To start, UWC is aiming to bring in up to 100 refugee students per year on full scholarships from 2017 onwards. In order to reach this ambitious goal UWC is delighted to have entered into a partnership with NGO Blue Rose Compass (BRC), which has extensive access to potential UWC candidates in refugee camps around the world. UWC and BRC will share the tasks of intensive fundraising, promotion, student recruitment and preparation.
Additional valued UWC supporters of refugee scholarships in 2016 include the Horizon Foundation which supports total 21 refugee/displaced or in other ways marginalised young people and 100 Lives who set up a scholarship programme for young people in the MENA region affected by conflicts. Together they are sponsoring eight additional refugee scholars from Syria starting from August 2016.
The event has already inspired many UWC alumni and supporters to initiate fundraising activities and to make personal donations in support of the UWC Refugee Initiatives, bringing UWC a little closer to our goal. If you wish to contribute or would like more information on UWC Refugee Initiatives, get in touch at fundraising@uwc.org.
You can find the pictures of the event on Flickr.