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About refugeeEd
About refugeeEd
RefugeeEd ran education programmes in Greece and beyond between 2018 and 2023. We worked to ensure children and adults on the move had access to a good education. From 2023 we began a gradual process of handing over our programmes to the community-run Athens-based project, We/Educate, who are still running them now.
We are extremely grateful to all of our dedicated volunteers, coordinators, trustees, supporters and friends who made this happen!
And finally, we like to say a HUGE thank you to all of the displaced people we worked with, who taught classes and accessed them. Your resilience, drive and passion for education is what keeps us inspired! We wish all of you the best of luck with everything!
History
History
RefugeeEd began after primary school teacher Helen Brannigan, spent time in Chios and Athens working with education organisations for people on the move. She discovered that there was a consistent need among the numerous local education organisations for expert-led support, and collaboration between organisations to share knowledge.
Helen set up refugeeEd's Capacity Building Programme to support volunteer teachers in this unique situation. After initially piloting this in northern Greece, we rolled it out in camps and community spaces throughout Greece and later into other countries. This was always a core part of our programmes, and involved context-specific training, mentoring, peer-support and tailored teaching resources (we still have a few here and here if anyone's looking!). We continually adapted this offering to meet the changing context and needs of the communities we worked with.
Alongside that, between 2018 and 2022 we matched volunteer teachers with organisations working with displaced people. It was difficult for small volunteer-run organisations to recruit teachers to volunteer with them and they had limited capacity to prepare them for their placement. We were able to use our position to recruit volunteers, particularly those with some sort of education background - whether they are recently qualified TEFL teachers or long-term teachers looking for a career break - and partner them with an organisation that would be a good match for their skills, time and interests. We then delivered an induction programme to support them to teach in a very different context to the one they might be used to.
During the lockdown of 2020 we pivoted our support to helping organisations to provide education packs which could be delivered to pupils to support self-led learning, and delivered a webinar programme. The online format of our webinars meant that we were able to deliver these through experts across the world and made our services available to a much bigger audience than had been possible before as our online presence grew - with people participating from across the world including Lebanon, Turkey, the UK and the USA.
In 2021, it was difficult for organisations to offer education in the camps because of Covid restrictions. But we discovered that many members of the displaced community were taking matters into their own hands by starting their own classes for members of their community. We developed the Community Teacher Training (CTT) Programme to support community teachers with training which was adapted to each cohort in line with what they needed and wanted to learn.
The CTT and Capacity Building programmes continued until 2023. Across that time, we ran programmes across Greece including the north, Athens and the islands, as well as in in France, Bulgaria, Serbia, Lebanon, and Malta.
Overall, this is what we achieved:
84 education specialists matched with organisations to deliver training, mentoring and support
60+ partner organisations supported
78 workshops/webinars run
36 volunteer teachers placed
15 community teacher training programmes run
68 community teachers trained
Hundreds to thousands of displaced pupils ultimately benefitted
“I believe that this is a golden opportunity for us as refugees, and I would like to extend my gratitude and thanks for the work you’re doing. I would be interested in doing more training, higher level training. There is a saying from my country that I like - instead of giving a man a fish everyday, teach him to fish, so that he will be self-sufficient at the end of the day.
“I believe that this is a golden opportunity for us as refugees, and I would like to extend my gratitude and thanks for the work you’re doing. I would be interested in doing more training, higher level training. There is a saying from my country that I like - instead of giving a man a fish everyday, teach him to fish, so that he will be self-sufficient at the end of the day.
-- CTT participant
Next chapter
Next chapter
In 2023, after several years of Helen and the trustees running refugeeEd from the UK with a team of coordinators and volunteers mostly in Greece, we decided it was time to hand over our work to a team who were more firmly rooted in the community our programmes were working with.
We already knew We/Educate, a new, community-centred organisation were doing great work delivering Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) training and certification to teachers from the displaced community in Athens. We thought they would be a perfect organisation to take over our programmes, as they have a similar mission and embody something we were working towards: being run by and for the community they work with, namely refugees and displaced persons, who take on roles as programme coordinators and board members.
We began a long process of collaboration and handover. We enjoyed learning how they work so closely with their community and all of the benefits that come from that, and we could share our insights and experience from five years of operating in the context. We are look forward to hearing about what they do next!
How to support our partners
We handed over our programmes to We/Educate, who are an amazing community-led organisation continuing to run fantastic education programmes for displaced people in Greece. You can find out more about how to support them here:
You can also support Choose Love, who were a big funder of our work, and continue to fund programmes for people on the move. They are unusual in that they fund local "grassroots" programmes directly. In our experience, grassroots organisations are more nimble, cost-effective and able to work directly with and from communities. Supporting them can mean that more of your money is getting to where it's needed! Find out how you can support them here:
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