Refugee scholars conduct a Seminar

Last month, refugees who have received scholarships from Howard Buffet, decided to give something back and very gracefully show what they have come to learn in the last year and a half. Their time was ready and the forum was chosen. All I had to do was wait and see it unfold.

The seminar, devised to share knowledge previously and currently being learned in universities and institutes in respect to developing management skills, began with a confident energy. Immediately following Quranic verses customary to Yemen, and opening speeches from the scholars and the community leaders themselves, the scholars emphasized the significance of being prepared. With a boyscout attitude, the young men demonstrated how obstacles standing in the way of poverty, survival and success could be better overcome by clearly identifying the already present strengths and weaknesses while communicating the importance of identifying opportunities along with threats i.e. to have a look at the glass of water as half-full and not just half-empty.

The stages in the creation of the seminar itself were revealed to the participants in order to demonstrate an example of a successful project come into fruition. The scholars humanistically and realistically described how amongst them there was a shared sentiment to give something back to the community in which they live, therefore a brainstorming session first had to happen in order to put their ideas to paper. By bringing knowledge from a previous training session, they then conducted a community based approach to discover whether the seminar would profit members of the Kharaz camp community or not. After it was indeed deemed advantageous, a proposal was created, and it was presented to the associate education officer at UNHCR i.e. me, to collectively assess the feasibility of completing such a project. As a final step, the scholars then sought sponsorship for the event from various sources, as they continued to refine their participation for the seminar. The scholars then skilfully incorporated psychological issues into the aforementioned example by advocating the importance of using organizational behaviour skills whenever developing a collaborative project. The importance for better communication skills in the camp was expressed, thankfully underscoring the need for respectable conduct and above all patience, when dealing with international staff. After two days of presenting knowledge acquired, as well as learning from the members of the Kharaz community, and even sharing a few laughs, the seminar came to a close with donations and certificates to all participants attending and involved in the successful completion of the seminar.