EDY-SYRIA Participates in “The Other 1 Percent” Conference

Berlin, Germany. On 18 and 19 June 2019, The president of the German Jordanian University Professor Dr. Manar Fayyad and EDU-SYRIA Project Manager Dr.Dhiha Abou-Tair participated in an international expert conference titled “The Other 1 Percent – Refugees at Institutions for Higher Education Worldwide”. The conference was organized by the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), on the occasion of World Refugee Day.

The objective of the conference is to emphasize the importance of expanding access to higher education for young refugees, as only one per cent of refugees worldwide are enrolled in tertiary education.

Prof Fayyad was a speaker in a workshop titled “Integrating Refugee Students and Internationalizing Higher Education – Challenges and Opportunities” on the second day of the conference. This workshop discussed the relationship between the influx of refugee students in high numbers and the strategic aim of internationalizing universities worldwide. It also studied the internationalization of higher education and the process of integrating an international/ intercultural dimension into the teaching, research and service of the institution, in addition to the challenges and opportunities of high numbers of refugee students in higher education institutions worldwide.

The Conference also included a photo exhibition that portrayed refugee students and alumni studying with a DAFI scholarship and in Connected Learning programmes in Lebanon, Senegal, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan and Rwanda.