*This is a guest post by Floribert Kakule Kamabu, RN. He first encountered WUSC three decades ago, and continues to contribute his experience as a member of the Student Refugee Program Alumni Advisory Team. The numbers can seem daunting: close to half of all school-aged refugee youth (48%) remain out of school, as reported by…

What we have learned from our work to improve girls’ education in Kakuma and Dadaab Refugee Camps and the surrounding host communities in Turkana, Garissa and Wajir counties in Kenya It has been a decade since WUSC and its partners launched the Kenya Equity in Education Project (KEEP). In that time, we have developed key…

*This is a guest post by Priscillah Panchol. She graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in 2021, and continues to contribute her experience as a member of the Student Refugee Program Alumni Advisory Team. As an alum of WUSC’s Student Refugee Program, I resonate very well with the core belief “Education changes the world’. The…

76th International Seminar in Ghana During the first four weeks of August 2023, 23 young people aged 18 to 30 gathered in Accra, Ghana to take part in one of WUSC’s flagship events: the International Seminar.  This is a unique and transformative opportunity that WUSC provides to young people every year, with the aim of…

The weekend of the 18th August to the 20th August could not go unspoken of! WUSC hosted our Local Committee National Training, bringing together over 80 participants from every corner of Canada. The WUSC  National Training is an annual event where Local Committee representatives from various campuses across Canada assemble to learn, collaborate and hone…

Congratulations to the newest cohort of graduates from the Student Refugee Program! Many of our new grads are now preparing to begin a new stage in their lives, from pursuing further studies in their fields of interest to moving to a different city or country to embarking on a new career path.  Access to post-secondary…

Although we are now seeing many Canadians eager to engage in international volunteer opportunities once again, we have heard from our IGNI+E partners that bringing together volunteers who can represent both national and international perspectives not only helped sustain momentum, but—as was the case at ACADES—also strengthened their results. So we undertook a study with our partners to learn more about their experiences during this unanticipated adaptation of our volunteer mobilization approach. Here are five key findings.

Receiving a work permit or business license creates positive impacts in the lives of refugees and for their communities. In practice, access to work permits and business licences is complicated by several barriers. A new report, led by the University of Oxford’s Refugee-Led Research Hub and supported by Mastercard Foundation and WUSC, explores the gaps that exist between policy and practice of refugee access to Class M work permits and business licences in Kenya, and identifies what support is needed to improve access to sustainable livelihoods for urban and camp refugees

On June 13, 2023, WUSC collaborated with Expectation State with funding from Mastercard Foundation to organize a virtual event on economic opportunities for refugee and displaced youth. Close to 100 people from different parts of the world participated in the event who were members of civil society organizations, academia, and post-secondary institutions. The aim of…

Around the world, only 6% of refugees have access to higher education, according to UNHCR.  When accessing higher education systems, refugee students are confronted with many challenges, including high tuition fees and living costs, legal restrictions, and strict language requirements.  Increasing access to higher education among refugees is key to building an inclusive and sustainable…