In early July this year, I listened to some moving stories about education.
We were hosting some guests from Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins – a consortium of Jesuit universities and colleges established in 2006 – which now offers higher education to camp-based refugees in ten different sites around the world.
Michael Smith, one of my Xavier Community friends and colleagues shared his story about the birth of Jesuit Commons. The origins were firmly established in June 2000 when he visited Mae La Refugee Camp on the Thai-Burma border – a Camp carved out of the jungle with mountains on one side and a road on the other. Some 51,000 refugees currently live there.
Educational challenges continue to face the country of (Burma) Myanmar. One of the poorest countries in south-east Asia, Myanmar has invested less than one per cent of its Gross Domestic Product in education over the last 50 years, and now a whole education system must be rebuilt. There are thousands of intelligent young refugees from Myanmar living in camps who are desperate to further their education. At the time of his 2000 visit to Mae La Camp, Michael wondered whether his dream of providing higher education to camp-based refugees could become a reality.
When he returned to Melbourne, he met Dr Marie Joyce, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Australian Catholic University (ACU), and together they established the Refugee Tertiary Education Committee. They approached ACU and asked if they would set aside spaces for camp-based Burmese refugees in Thailand in the online undergraduate Diploma of Business Administration. ACU agreed and there was an intake of refugees into the diploma in 2003. Seventeen students graduated in 2006, 11 men and six women.
On the day before the 2006 Award Ceremony in Thailand, there was a rehearsal. Students put on the robes and mortarboards, and learned the appropriate bow to make when presented with their certificates. At one point in the practice, a young woman named Imelda exclaimed, ‘I am so excited! For the first time in my life I feel excited!’
Her statement was at once wonderful and sad. It expressed what online university education means for refugees in camps where a pervasive sense of hopelessness reigns.
Nearly 12 years ago in Sydney, Fr Mark Raper SJ, then the Australian Provincial, gave the May graduation address at ACU. Speaking about the importance of the teaching ministry, he said: ‘Education gives a window through which to imagine a possible future. Once, after beating through thick scrub in northern Uganda to find a group of Sudanese refugees who had spent weeks trekking to the border seeking safety, all the people asked of me was for a blackboard and chalk. In the Cambodian camps, which were highly politicised hothouses, I remember the relief of the students of mathematics, who could stretch their minds on a topic that is very difficult to politicise.’
Michael made the same point about refugees in Kenya. When their group first came to Kakuma Camp in Kenya, one of the refugees said, ‘We thought that the world had forgotten us. This program has shown us that we are not forgotten.’
In 2014, when attending a Jesuit Commons Board meeting in Rome, Michael met a splendidly named African Jesuit, Fr Deogratias Rwezaura, Regional Director of Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Eastern Africa. He related how the refugees in Kakuma Camp were studying philosophy online. Someone asked, ‘But why would a refugee in a camp want to study philosophy? Aren’t there more useful things for them to study? How will that help them to get a job?’ Fr Deogratias quietly explained, ‘Refugees don’t seek higher education in order to get jobs. They seek higher education in order to end ignorance. They want to learn so that they can build a better community.’
Education in the Ignatian tradition is offered right across the globe. In 2013 a new Jesuit school was opened in Redfern – a suburb in inner Sydney. Redfern Jarjum College is a small, tuition-free primary school for the children of families in the Aboriginal community of Redfern and surrounds. Similar in some respects to Cristo Rey schools in America, this initiative seeks to educate urban Aboriginal children who are not participating or coping in mainstream primary schools. Transitioning these young people to mainstream education is a significant success in itself.
When planning in 2012 for the opening of Redfern Jarjum College, one of the Aboriginal elders at the Board meeting – Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo – leant across the table and said to me: ‘Fr Chris, you are giving my people the most precious gift of all – the gift of education.’
Let us be grateful for the education we have received. In the words of St Gregory of Nazianzen, it ‘gives wings to the soul.’
