Refugee-Led Conference on Research that Amplifies Refugee Voices in Connected Learning Higher Education Programs. Updates: We’re thrilled to share the latest on the COHERE CLCC Project, an inspiring effort to empower student researchers while upholding ethical academic excellence. Following our recent updates, a wide range of activities have been going on including completion of the training for refugee student researchers, research proposals review, and consultations on successful student support. After our meeting on January 26, 2025, at Cairo Hotel, and recent strides in student support, here’s the scoop on our progress! The meeting brought together project coordinators, finance team members, and reviewers to review milestones. We discussed student proposals currently under review, prioritizing ethical data collection. To equip our students, we’ve held two workshop days on SPSS and quantitative data analysis, alongside peer-to-peer sessions at the Learning Center. Students are now paired with mentors—drawn from our skilled reviewer pool—for personalized guidance via virtual meetings, helping their proposals take shape. On the ethical front, following our research team’s advice, the project turned out to be large, and for authenticity matters and with the strong commitment to YES mission, certain principles and guidelines need to be followed. We’re advancing a partnership with Musinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to review undergraduate proposals. The MOU is being finalized, and a budget-friendly option was endorsed by our finance team. Excitingly, the updated reviewer guidelines have now been shared with reviewers, along with assigned student proposals, to ensure consistent and constructive feedback. However, to be able to align with the review team and ensure flexibility for our students’ diverse projects, we are envisaging further assessment of the timeline. Our student researchers are off to a strong start! Proposals are in review, with three groups already receiving initial feedback via email from project coordinators. Students are tapped into Learning Center resources since earlier February, including gadgets supplied by the academic team. After this first feedback round, mentors will guide students to finalize and approve their work.

After the launch of the project and the selection of successful project participants, activities continued with the first phase of the project which consists of in a workshop that brought the refuge student researchers together with trained facilitators and other external mentors to strengthen the capacity and knowledge of the refugee students in areas of Community Participatory Action Research and its significance in the context of emergency. 14 participants were successfully selected, and on their journey, they are supported by two online and onsite facilitators as the training will be conducted in hybrid. Four review committee members, identified from CLCC member institutions and other education professional institutions with background in education in emergencies and who have implemented higher education programs in a refugee context such as Purdue University, Masinde Mulilo University of Science and Technology, Jesuit Worldwide Learning… are on board to provide support and mentorship to the participants. The training is covering areas organized into 4 Modules that are designed to strengthen capacity of the refugee researchers on key aspects of the Community Based Participatory Action Research and its applicability in the refugee context, the design and methodologies, and research paper writing. It is being conducted for a duration of two months and participants are paired with external professional researchers to help review their progressive work, offering mentorship and opportunities for networking. As shared in our previous updates, the training will conclude in November 2024, and upon completion, the refugee researchers will present their papers in the conference to be held locally in Kakuma as the second phase of this project. At Youth Education and Sports, we are grateful for the continuous support received from Cohere, the community of the CL and the entire community of Kakuma and Kalobeyei at large. We look forward to furthering and expanding collaborations for the success of this project as we commit to empowering our communities.

Youth Education and Sports received an award by the Connected Learning in Crisis Consortium to implement its Refugee-Led symposium on Research that Amplifies Refugee Voices in Connected Learning Higher Education Programs themed “EMPOWER KAKUMA: BRIDGING HORIZONS THROUGH REFUGEE-LED RESEARCH". The project consists in an academic conference within Kakuma, offering a platform for refugee researchers to showcase their findings and foster local knowledge recognition and generation. Young refugee researchers will be offered an upskilling training on Participatory Action Research methods and paper writing, and the call for applications to join the training was launched on July 10 22 applicants expressed interest in the application and our team has been following up with applicants on addressing incomplete applications to establish a clear and democratic selection process and increase chances of assess to opportunities. According to the review committee team, during their last meeting, the processing of application is going on well, and the list of selected candidates is expected shortly.