In this Toolkit we provide an accessible and clear guide to designing and implementing a blended bridging programme for refugees and disadvantaged host community students in low resource contexts. The Toolkit is designed for those who are interested in:
- Learning more about the barriers and facilitators experienced by refugees seeking to access higher education through an introductory literature review on blended bridging programmes and how they might look to address these challenges and opportunities
- Exploring the possibility of setting up a bridging programme for refugees and marginalised learners. It provides a set of ideas, and more importantly questions, about how to decide whether a bridging programme is the right approach for students in that context
- Designing a bridging programme for refugees and marginalised learners. It offers a Design Framework that details the various conceptual and practical components that we considered central for developing and implementing bridging programmes in low resource environments, with examples from our team’s experience of how we approached these different dimensions
- Access to higher education for refugees in Lebanon and Uganda. We provide detailed case studies and reflections on two bridging programmes that our teams implemented in 2018-2021 in Lebanon (PADILEIA) and in 2021 in Uganda (Foundations for All)
It is based on a participatory action research project that was established in 2018 between the Refugee Law Project in Uganda, the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, and the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. In partnership also with the Mastercard Foundation, the project aimed to design and implement a blended bridging programme across two sites in Uganda to support refugee and disadvantaged host community students wishing to study at University. In brief, its aims were as follows, with further information on how these aims were established available in the Design Framework:
- To enable students to access and thrive in higher education, to become leaders and advocates for their communities, and to feel empowered to enact broader change in systems of higher education
- To design assets-based educational programmes for refugee and host community learners built on mutual respect that celebrate diversity
- To provide spaces for refugee and host community learners that are inclusive, transformative, and effective
- To evidence collaboratively developed, holistic and contextually relevant higher education programmes
- To support calls for structural change in how institutions of higher education and host governments respond to refugee learners
Our findings and reflections from this project are shared throughout the Toolkit, with a detailed background about the project to be found in the FFA Case Study. Alongside the main sections of the Toolkit, this introductory section also contains brief notes on the key principles underpinning the broader FFA methodology.
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