THE BE THE ONE PLATFORM A Toolkit for Refugee Youth and their Educators

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1 THE BE THE ONE PLATFORM A Toolkit for Refugee Youth and their Educators We aim to establish a toolkit for refugee youth to use as a means to maximize their educational, professional and personal potential under even the most unstable circumstances.

2 BE THE ONE: HOW IT WORKS AND THE NEED IT ADDRESSES The Be The One Platform is a program designed to provide refugee youth with the tools to maximize their potential in any situation with which they may be presented, as well as a toolkit for educators working with refugee populations. After a decade of working with South Sudanese refugees in Israel, Uganda and South Sudan, one of the themes surfacing again and again is The One. As in many social groups, groups of refugee youth are often defined by a leader who has managed not only to survive, but to thrive, despite challenging upbringings. The Be The One platform is designed to recognize qualities in The One and provide tools for all refugee youth to define and internalize those qualities in her or his own personal way, as well as to easily convey these tools to others. We believe this will open a world of educational opportunities often only accessible to The One. FOR THE YOUTH The toolkit will be run from a safe, nurturing center in Juba by local educators in cooperation with educators from throughout Africa and beyond. This joint cooperation will be made possible as part of the program will be digitalized and facilitated online, broadening the participants horizons. From the moment the students enter the center they will be instantly connected to a globalizing world in which they will have full agency to participate. Facilitators, both onsite and online, will lead cohorts of youth through the 11 modules below and work with the youth to identify areas in which they have grown and show potential to grow. Students will work with personal mentors on a projects that will act as practical learning experiences to fully internalize the material being developed in the below modules. - My Peace - Crisis management and conflict resolution - My Body - Nutrition, Health, and Sanitation - My Talent - Arts, Sports, Music, Math, Computers, etc. - My Business Entrepreneurship and small business skills training based on talents identified in the previous module - My Connections Social Media, Entrepreneurship and IT - My Planet Identifying areas in which environmental protection is their right and their responsibility, learning art from recycling - My Word - English Language Training - My Rights and My Duties- Understanding the law and its relation to me - My Voice Gender Mainstreaming - My World - A holistic approach to living in unstable situation and in unfamiliar social environment, identifying personal traits to help cope with change, learning about the world, history, civics education, etc. - My Community Identifying social skills, intra- community relations, using My talent to bridge social tension

3 FOR THE FACILITATORS Local and distant educators will have an opportunity to expand their horizons and build their own capacities through guided facilitator reflection sessions and working groups that will enable them to unpack issues dealt with during the modules of the program. From these reflections, new models of best practices will be established, enabling the facilitators to work with refugee youth in their communities in a more holistic and impact yielding way. RATIONALE - OUR METHOD FOR ADDRESSING THE NEED While living as refugees, many children and youth acquire survival skills that enable them to find immediate and practical solutions to the problems that they have had to encounter. These solutions all too often involve degradation and succumbing to oppression, as well as accepting patriarchal systems that often deprived them of their own voice. This often results in significant challenges arising between educators and pupils. Be The One is based on observations of leading figures, The Ones, amongst refugee youth populations. These figures show traits that enable them to not only survive, but to thrive. The Be The One project was developed as an attempt to identify a toolkit that allows any member to maximize her or his own reach. The project develops a practical, accessible and handy toolkit for educators to open new horizons for refugee children and reclaim their roles as active, moral agents in society, as well as successful individuals. The toolkit was developed using data collected over a decade of working with refugee youth and analyzing the skills and characteristics of youth who have been more successful than the norm in adjusting to their new environment and in reaching success in various challenges. (See also Pilot, below) TARGET POPULATION AND LOCATION Beneficiaries will include 100 South Sudanese refugee youth, 6 educators in South Sudan, and 6 educators throughout Africa and beyond. We aim to work with 100 South Sudanese refugee or former refugee youth between the ages of The present situation in South Sudan is unstable and many of the kids find themselves on and off within UNMISS shelters, (while their parents are always) ready to flee (with them) to nearby countries to seek shelter with or without their parents as conditions threaten to destabilise. Many of these youth are youth we have worked with as an organization over the past three years. Accordingly we are well acquainted with their strengths and the challenges they face.

4 PILOT WORK UNTIL NOW AND TAKING THE PROJECT FORWARD WHAT WE HAVE DONE Members of our team have been working with South Sudanese refugees for almost a decade, while they were seeking refuge in Israel. Following their deportation (over 1,500 South Sudanese asylum seekers were deported by the Israeli government when South Sudan gained independence) in 2012, we founded the Come True project, now operating under the NGO Become. The Come True project is a scholarship program for 120 of the deported youth, currently studying in Uganda. A team from Become and the educators from Uganda have been working with these youth, their families, communities, and experts from South Sudan to identify areas in which their education, and education for youth in similar situation, can be enhanced. A considerable learning we have identified over the years is the presence of The One one or more youth who establish leadership roles amongst their peers. Below are a few background revelations that underlie the idea we are presenting to OpenIDEO: a. In most groups of students there are leading figures who adjust well and succeed according to subjective and objective measures. b. Leading figures are not necessarily kids who have suffered less as refugees or kids who come from stronger families. c. Contrary to what one might expect, leading figures do not tend to compete with each other but to the contrary, they tend to stick to each other, empower each other and support other members of the group. However, socially, they don t mix with kids who they don t recognise as leading figures. d. The local recipient community shows much more tolerance towards leading figures and they cope and adjust much easier with common challenges and norms, thus surrounded by much less tension, friction, hostility and report much less instances they feel they fall victim to racism than other members of the group. Our goal is to use these prior observations and to identify the skills, traits and cognitive backgrounds that underlie taking such leading roles and develop ways to support and encourage them. This would benefit both the students as individuals and benefit the entire community of which they are members. A PILOT FOR THE BE THE ONE PLATFORM To pilot this program we would take three initial steps and evaluation: 1) Identify a group of 10 South Sudanese Youth 2) 2 week intensive training: A facilitator from our team, as well as a local facilitator would guide this group through the 11 My modules mentioned above. 3) While the full program will be fully instructed through developing practical, youth led projects, the pilot program could be also based on a mini practicum that would enable our team and an evaluator identifies areas for growth.

5 4) Evaluation: An evaluator would identify a number of indicators to evaluate the participant s adaptation of the material, potential to use it in their futures. The evaluator would then work with the two facilitators, and a number of our existing partners to suggest scaling the project to our proposed 100 youth. All initial activities will use human resources, connections and infrastructures that are available to the project directors as a result of the rich activities they are presently involved in. OUR TEAM Our work until now would not have been possible without the expertise of local and international experts in the field. Below are a number of our past and present partners who will be a vital part of the development of this program: Hakim Monykuer Awuok - Ministry of Education, S. Sudan The Lost Boys of Sudan - Phoenix, Arizona Mike Kironde - CEO of the JANAN schools, founder of PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools), and the founder of over 20 schools throughout Uganda and Kenya Alex Gumisiriza - Academic Director, Trinity Primary, Kampala Prossy Lamunu - Head of Legal Desk, Interaid, Become Board Member Dr. Zeev Dgani - Director of Justspirulina nutrition in crisis non- profit project SKILL SHARE WHAT DO WE NEED HELP WITH WHAT CAN WE SHARE? Our work is a derivative of the contributions of numerous experts from a diverse array of fields. Idea and skill share is what defines our work. Accordingly, even in areas where we have renowned experts supporting technical aspects of our work, we are thrilled to work with an even greater diversity of ideas and contributors. The team on this project can contribute with decades of experience in conflict transformation, law, education for refugees, the philosophy of education, project management, and youth engagement programs.

6 OUR TEAM The Be The One program will be lead by the organization Become. Become works with communities supporting orphans and vulnerable children, and identifying areas in which orphans and vulnerable children can best access education. Guiding this particular project, will be Dr. Rami Gudovich, Mr. Hakim Monykuer Awuok, Adv. Lea Forshtat, and Mr. Ben Vorspan. Dr. Gudovich, a professor for the philosophy of education (PhD, 2007, Columbia University), has been working for the last 20 years as a facilitator of integrated educational programs for disadvantaged youth. A prominent figure in the rights for refugees movement in Israel, Dr. Gudovich is the Co- founder of the Come True project, and a board member with the Lost Boys of Sudan. Hakim Monykuer Awuok Hakim holds over a decade of experience in education at a national level, having served as an executive director on a number of South Sudan s ministries, and working as a curriculum developer, and education coordinator. He is the founder of a number of national NGOs in South Sudan aiming to improve education, mitigate conflict, and establish good governance. Hakim holds a B.A. in Public Administration from Kampala International University and an M.A. from the University of Juba. Most recently, Hakim served with the Lost Boys Center for Leadership Development in Phoenix, Arizona through the Atlas Corps Fellowship (2013/2014). Hakim s interests lie in education, social adhesion, and youth & women s empowerment. Lea Forshtat, Adv. is a laywer with over 20 years experience providing pro bono legal advice to human rights and social change organizations. Lea also holds extensive experience in developing and facilitating conflict transformation trainings for diverse populations. Lea is a co- founder of the Come True project and a prominent figure in the rights for refugees movement in Israel. Ben Vorspan has worked for a number of years on human rights and education projects for marginalized communities, indigenous populations, and oppressed peoples. He has worked with Palestinian youth and young adults for over five years, on a number of education, rights based training programs and youth leadership initiatives. His work has brought him to Kenya, Madagascar, Cameroon, Mali and beyond.