In March, the Learners’ Voice Program hosted a residential session in Athens, Greece for the first time since its inception in 2010. The two-week intensive session brought together 25 participants, including youth from refugee communities, to explore the global forced migration and refugee crisis, which is the program’s thematic focus for 2016-17.
This first residential session comprised interactive workshops led by the Yale World Fellows and various experts from Oxford University, Harvard University, the University of Bologna and Save The Children, among others. The workshops were designed to spark creative thinking and discussion among the participants around both practical and theoretical knowledge of the challenge topic, in addition to developing their communication, leadership and project development skills. The group also devoted attention to supporting the work of organizations working with both urban and camp refugee communities in Athens, including the Khora Community Centre, METAdrasi, Orange House, Project Elea, and Organization Earth.
Project development is a key component of the program; teams were tasked with developing grass-roots projects to support the refugees and organizations working on the ground. The residential session concluded with the presentations of five group projects to a panel of education experts including Mr. Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO, WISE, and Dr. Stefanos Gialamas, President of the American Community Schools of Athens, as well as representatives from Project Elea, METAdrasi, and Organization Earth.
The Athens residential session was designed to enable the participants to apply their skills and knowledge as they research and develop innovative educational projects throughout the year. The Learners will continue to develop their group projects online with the support of mentors. In June, they will meet again for a Second Residential Session in Madrid which will address social entrepreneurship and design thinking modules delivered by Babson College and expert faculty.
Successful projects will be presented at the WISE 2017 Summit in Doha in November.