In 2024, Science United Project in collaboration with RAD Music International and Changemakers Lab is launching an exciting initiative to focus on reaching asylum seekers and refugees residing in Greek accommodation sites. Science United Teaching Leaders project aims to actively support refugee and asylum seeking teachers in attending science teaching workshops, planning lessons, and facilitating science activities for the children in their communities. The project is funded by the MASS Action Grant and Blossom Hill Foundation.
Science United Teaching Leaders project mission is to cultivate science education within displaced communities, fostering empowerment and self-sustainability. Through specialized training, the project will equip aspiring asylum seeking and refugee teachers with the skills and resources needed to deliver experiential science activities. Science United Teaching Leaders aim is to inspire a love for learning, ensuring that both educators and students can actively contribute to and benefit from the transformative power of science education.
The project has already provided a training workshop in February 2024, at Rad Music International in Mytilene, Lesvos, in which 21 asylum seekers or refugees underwent a 12-hour science teaching training using Science United Project’s science kits, earning certificates. The project in order to further its reach to the community, will continue with identifying up to four asylum seekers or refugees passionate about teaching science, providing them with lesson planning guidance, educational materials and a reference letter, in order to teach science activities to the children in their community. The program will result in engaging children from the accommodation site communities in hands-on science lessons, fostering positive learning experiences.
The new Science United Teaching Leaders will gain valuable teaching skills, resources, and experience needed to deliver experiential science lessons. They will have the opportunity to communicate displaced students' talents and needs for equity in education via Science United Project's social media platforms. At the same time, displaced children will enjoy positive science learning experiences, receive science kits for experiments that they can present to their families and peers, and show their knowledge.
RAD Music International was founded by an asylum-seeker in the Moria camp in Lesvos in June 2018. It started with himself and as a group of people who would dance, play music together in order to stop fights and bring a light in the lives of refugees inside the camp. To this day, RAD Music International remains a refugee-led organization. RAD Music International space in Mytilene is open to everyone aiming to build an inclusive society, by providing Music, language learning, Dance and Integration sessions, CV preparation and diverse support. Changemakers Lab is an innovation hub committed to developing creative solutions for social challenges. By leveraging research, technology, and entrepreneurship, the lab collaborates with organizations to drive positive change and sustainable solutions. Blossom Hill Foundation is a US based nonprofit organization founded in 2009 by Shiva Sarram, a former child of war from Iran who fled Tehran in the early 1980's with her family and came to America where Shiva and Blossom Hill's Board of Directors are committed to investing in social entrepreneurs to help children affected by conflict in the Middle East thrive. MASS Action (which stands for Migrant & Asylum Seeker Solidarity & Action) is a registered UK charity that supports grassroots projects with dignified and sustainable initiatives for migrants and asylum seekers, so they can worry less about fundraising and more on their work on the ground. MASS Action believes safe and legal freedom of movement should be for everyone, and through this belief MASS Action wants to transform how people understand and react to the movement of people.