From refugee camp to campus

The Canberra Times

Twelve Australian universities are working with the Commonwealth government on a plan to give refugees from wars like those in Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine a fast track to study.  The ANU's Bronwyn Parry said the aim was "to create life-changing resettlement and educational opportunities for hundreds of students who have been displaced by conflict in recent times, offering them the chance to re-start their educational journeys and to bring their skill and expertise to Australia".

Transcript

00:00 As a consequence of global conflict in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and most

00:06 recently Gaza, there are an enormous number of young, very talented refugee students who've

00:13 been displaced from their educational journey.

00:16 So the difficulty for them is that a lot of them are really high performing, so they've

00:20 got A*s in their international baccalaureate and they've gone on to university where they're

00:24 doing say a degree in accountancy or something like that.

00:27 And then what happens is they get bombed out of their homes and they wind up in refugee

00:33 camps and they can't continue their education from there.

00:37 And that's really problematic because if they don't get back into education within a few

00:42 years then it's pretty much over for them and they just wind up driving a cab for the

00:46 rest of their life.

00:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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