While the last few years have formed the foundation for the CAWU Learning Centre, the 2023-2024 year will be pivotal to our center’s success in Cairo.

Over the past few months, we have been fortunate to meet with both Dr. Mbaye Lo of Duke University (USA) with four of his students and Kal Balaven, head of Dunn School, California, who both pledged support to the CAWU Learning Center for Refugees. Their and your support will be crucial to helping the CAWU Learning Center become self-sustaining in the next two years.

In the next few months, with the help of Dunn School, we will transition to using the American curriculum system—and become the first refugee learning center to do so throughout Egypt. Once this transition is complete, Ricardo Langwieder, our Board of Governance chairman, is confident we can obtain funds from several businesses in Egypt and abroad as we will become the only refugee school providing recognized diplomas that are not Sudanese—currently the only diploma option for refugees from non-Arabic speaking countries. 

As our start-up funds from Sternsinger (Germany) and Pour les Autres (Netherlands) will be depleted by July 1, your donations are vital to sustain our school during this transitory period.

The CAWU Learning Centre requires around $45,000 US$ to fund the upcoming school year (2023-2024). With the switch to the Dunn School curriculum, we can also offer a recognized American diploma. Our aim is to serve between 30 and 50 students in the coming school year, but this is only possible if our learning centre remains open. Every contribution, large or small, will help our center help students continue their education in Egypt!

Eleanor Ross, one of the Duke University students who visited Egypt, took the lead to start a fundraising campaign to keep the learning center open. Starting a Go Fund Me campaign, Eleanor and her classmates have raised over $3,830 so far – hoping to raise a total of $6,000 in the coming months. A bake sale, for example, raised over $400 on the university’s campus. Outside of the US, Eleanor is working with international students at the American University of Cairo to translate the Go Fund Me campaign and an accompanying poster into Arabic, as well as with students from her hometown to raise funds.

We truly appreciate these students’ efforts and would appreciate it if you, long-time readers of our newsletter, could contribute as well. That is possible through both the Go Fund Me page or for citizens of the Netherlands the donation page of the Arab-West Foundation (with ANBI status for tax deductions).

It is crucial to ensure that the learning center survives this school year as we are on the verge of finalizing an agreement with Dunn School to create a mini-term trip where Dunn School students and faculty visit CAWU and work with our students and faculty helping to support our efforts to becoming an accredited academy—the first of its kind for a refugee school in Egypt. Once this transition is made, we strongly believe that the CAWU Learning Center will achieve financial self-sustainability. However, for this to happen, it is essential that the learning center remains operational during the 2023-2024 academic year.

In the school year 2021-2022 we served over 30 students. In August 2022, the CAWU Learning Center lost many students since we notified students and parents that we were uncertain if we would be able to fund the learning center for the entire school year. Only in November 2022 we finally had the funds needed to cover the 2022-2023 school year. This summer refugees will ask again if we will be able to offer them education throughout the year. Uncertainty about funding will make students drop out.

Please help us make school year 2022-2023 possible!!

The Current Situation of Most Refugee Schools

We introduced Kal Balaven to St. Joseph learning center, the UNHCR, the Dutch Embassy and Memphis International School who all spoke of the need for better refugee education. Kal Balaven also visited our learning center and is convinced our center provides a much-needed alternative for current non-Arabic refugee education.

Although Egypt makes great efforts to incorporate Arabic speaking refugees in the Egyptian school system, these pursuits do not help refugees from non-Arabic speaking African countries. Some 25.200 children between ages 6 and 18 are predominantly served by so-called community schools, mostly in overpopulated classes, that follow the Sudanese curriculum. None of these are registered with the Egyptian Ministry of Education and thus officially not allowed to carry the name “school.”

CAWU intern Júlia Arenós Karsten visited several community learning centers and found numerous problems like over crowdedness and untrained teachers. When centers use English as the main language of education, textbooks belonging to the Sudanese- Arabic curriculum are badly translated. Further, teachers in these community centers mostly receive less than $100 /month for a full-time job—a salary that no one can live on. Not surprisingly, the education at these centers is very poor despite efforts to make the best with the little funds they have.

Fr. Claude, head of the St. Joseph learning center in Zamalek, Cairo, serving Eritrean refugees, and a feeder/partner ‘school’ of our learning center explains that this tenuous situation makes teachers look for work elsewhere, creating instability and discontinuity in learning for students. “We need support to provide teachers with better income,” he says.

The Ukraine-Russian war created hardships that, in particular, affected lower income people, including refugees. Many have left Fr. Claude’s center for poorer quality community ‘schools’ where most refugees live to reduce their transportation costs of around $15 per student/month.

Most students obtain not more than primary school education since families cannot afford the cost of secondary school education. And when they continue, the quality of secondary school education using the Sudanese curriculum leaves much to be desired. In 2015-2016 one of the better community schools had only four students pass the bar for further university education which made the UNHCR decide not to pay exam fees for any student in community schools.  Survival comes first and goes at the expense of education.  Only good education can get them out of poverty.

Our education

The quality of education at our learning center is well known. Dunn School accepted four of our students and needs to raise funds for their school fees. School education in the USA is particularly important as it qualifies our students for university education which will enable them to help their families and communities.

For students who do not qualify for school in the USA, the CAWU Learning Center aims to provide internationally recognized diplomas for their future. However, up until this point, we have been unable to secure these certifications due to barriers with regulations of the Ministry of Education. However, starting the coming academic year we intend to work with Dunn School by following their curriculum and exams. Accordingly, students will be able to receive an accredited American diploma on the completion of their studies at CAWU.

Another struggle we have been facing is how to receive funding. While the Center for Arab-West Understanding NGO that established the Learning Centre, is authorized to provide education to refugees, the process to receive foreign funding is incredibly tedious.

Accordingly, we are currently searching for (and finding!) solutions with experienced Egyptian education consultants for a legal status that makes receiving foreign funding easier.

The Center for Arab-West Understanding NGO is authorized to provide education to refugees but since the process to receive foreign funding is so tedious, it is hard to work with an NGO.

After years of struggling to provide refugee students in Egypt with low-cost quality education, though, we are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Your support will enable us to create an Academy that will provide low-income people in Egypt with the opportunity to obtain low-cost quality education!! Any donation, small or big, is most welcome to carry us through this period of transition. Contribute through Go Fund Me or through the Arab-West Foundation. Please help us to make this school possible!!

Thank you in advance for your support.

May 6, 2023

Cornelis Hulsman,

Director

CAWU-Learning Center for Refugees