The second cohort of students from the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya received a York University Certificate of Completion in Educational Studies during York University’s Spring Convocation ceremonies.
Although the 60 students will not be attending convocation, they will be recognized and acknowledged by York President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri and by Faculty of Education Dean Ron Owston during the June 23 ceremony.
The students, who completed 30 university credits, similar to Bachelor of Education students at York, were a part of a certificate program offered through the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) project.
York received $4.5 million in funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development for the BHER project, which is a development partnership of York, and Kenyatta and Moi universities in Kenya, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), University of British Columbia and Windle Trust Kenya. The goal of the project is to deliver post-secondary education to refugees in order to improve the quality of teaching and education for children in the camps. Two-thirds of the 59 students already work as teachers in the camps’ schools.