Refugee Education Sponsorship Program: Enhancing Communities Together (RESPECT)

RESPECT has three main goals: to build awareness of refugee issues among youth around the world; to connect international youth to refugee youth by pen friend letter exchange; and to encourage young people to organise events to teach others about refugee issues and to raise funds for their refugee school.

The RESPECT programme follows three steps:

Step 1: Building Awareness of Refugee Issues
The first goal of RESPECT is to increase awareness and understanding of refugee issues among students in North America. Before partnering North American and refugee schools to begin a letter and cultural exchange, North American students follow a refugee-awareness programme. This may include watching videos, reviewing books and research, and discussion. RESPECT encourages the refugee school to supply materials in order to facilitate this, for example pamphlets/brochures and photographs/videos from the school, along with a letter of greeting from a contact teacher at the refugee school to the contact teacher in North America. RESPECT also maintains a searchable Resource Database that includes resources available from various international agencies. The listing for each resource includes information on age-level suitability, languages the resource is published in, and the contact information for an agency that distributes the resource.

Step 2 - Getting to Know Each Other
RESPECT maintains a growing list of contacts with refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) schools around the world in countries such as Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Guinea, and Uganda. To request an introduction teachers fill out the Non-Refugee School Registration Form found on the RESPECT website. Students will then send letters/ photographs introducing themselves. RESPECT will attempt to match pen pals based on age, sex and interests. Refugee schools who are concerned about financial constraints to participating in the letter writing programme should contact RESPECT.

Step 3 - Enhancing Communities Together
North American schools may choose to conduct a fundraiser to send the sponsoring school a care package. RESPECT recommends sending items that a whole class or a whole school could share, such as used microscopes and slides, used school posters, quality student science projects, transistor radio, solar powered calculator, international reply coupons, etc.

Trainers from RESPECT based in Winnipeg, Canada are also available for presentations to schools about refugee issues. An online forum and e-newsletter aim to encourage discussion about refugee issues. Future activities planned including holding workshops, and developing projects that would encourage collaboration among participating schools.

Refugees, Youth