Funded by the Mastercard Foundation and running from 2019-2022, the Foundations for All (FFA) project was designed to provide insights on how to effectively facilitate access to and future success in higher education for displaced and refugee young people in resource-poor environments through contextualised blended bridging programs. Specifically, the project focused on:
1) developing and demonstrating the use of a shareable toolkit that includes:
- a Scoping Tool for effective assessment of the needs and capacities of refugees and displaced young people in relation to accessing and succeeding in higher education, including existing pathways, requirements, and obstacles;
- a Design Framework for the development of supported blended learning interventions for and with displaced youth that take into account the relevant barriers and facilitators in the local context as well as the specific psycho-social support needs of the target population;
- a case study of a blended bridging program in Lebanon; and
- a case study of a blended bridging program in Uganda (which will be piloted as part of the action research); and
2) piloting and assessing a blended learning bridging program, ‘Foundations for All’, for refugees and displaced youth with the goal of enabling their subsequent access to and success in tertiary education in Uganda. Foundations for All is a 30-week curriculum in core subjects necessary to success in higher education in Uganda: English, Maths, Digital Skills and Study Skills. Understanding Myself and Others is the core module for Foundations for All, designed to provide psychosocial support to all students in the programme. This bridging programme ran in two sites: Kampala as well as the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement. Each location was staffed by a team of tutors from the Refugee Law Project and was taught to a total of 40 refugee students.
The toolkit (Literature Review, Case Studies, Scoping Tool, and Design Framework) that is presented on this site is an output of this Foundations for All project.
This Toolkit was made possible through the collaborative efforts of the following researchers in particular:
- The Refugee Law Project, Makerere University: Martha Akello, Apollo Mulondo, Cosmos Lugala, Mary Kampogo, Sandra Nanyunja, and Robert Egwalu
- University of Edinburgh: Hammed Alabi, Sharon Boateng, Georgia Cole, Megan Douglas, Jean-Benoît Falisse, Michael Gallagher, Kate Symons, JJ Miranda, Andie Reynolds, and Michael Crawley
- American University of Beirut: Brooke Atherton El-Amine, Ali Nehme, Raghda Ziadeh, Fadi Salahedin, Carina Radler-Sokolowski, Rabih Shibli, Maha Haidar, and Melissa Matar
For any queries in relation to the Toolkit please contact Michael Gallagher, Georgia Cole or Martha Akello.