ACCESS: THE OSUN DIFFERENCE MAKING EDUCATION ACCESSIBLE TO MARGINALIZED POPULATIONS

Thanks to RhEAP, many refugees in Kakuma have a hope of joining university. Normally, chances of going to university in Kakuma would go to a few students who managed to get above a B-, almost impossible in our very crowded school classrooms. The program is largely inclusive as it has accommodated students of all academic capabilities based on interviews and an application, not only from their high school grades. Personally, it has given me an opportunity to redeem myself in order to achieve my dreams of joining university to pursue my ambition.”

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives (Hubs) have a clear mission to advocate for increased educational access for displaced populations and to do so on a global stage. OSUN serves as the co-chair of the UNHCR-founded Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways. The Task Force promotes and supports the expansion of complementary education pathways and has opened up a multitude of collaborative possibilities with global actors across the refugee education space, including key government and European Commission representatives, major donors, and other university networks, all working to develop solutions for the world’s displaced populations to access higher education.

The Hubs fill a major gap in the education in emergencies space, including Kenya, Bangladesh, Jordan and East Sudan, where many scholarship opportunities for displaced students go unfilled because they are not university ready due to interrupted education and the impact of their trauma.

The Hubs Refugee Higher Education Access Program (RhEAP) is the only sustained bridging program in displacement contexts that trains the most marginalized students in university readiness, critical thinking, reading, writing and upskills content knowledge. Those affected by displacement are often impacted by educational disruptions, lack of access to formal secondary school, overcrowded classrooms, underprepared teachers, and rote learning environments. RhEAP offers a comprehensive bridge-year program that prepares learners with the needed skills to be successful in university or to create their own livelihood pathways. Since its inception, the Hub has provided higher educational and research opportunities to 31,610 refugee and displaced learners.

The Collaborative For Liberal Education For Adolescents

The Collaborative for Liberal Education for Adolescents (CLEA) brings intellectually inspiring opportunities in the liberal arts and sciences to students who are younger than the traditional undergraduate. CLEA’s premise is that opening doors to authentic postsecondary study at a younger age is a powerful way to prepare them for collegiate critical thinking and academic writing, connecting education and the classroom to issues of civic and social importance. With a focus on working with young people who face significant structural barriers to higher education, CLEA is a collaboration between Al QudsBard College (AQB), Bard Early College (BEC), and the American University of Central Asia’s Technical School of Innovation (TSI). Within secondary schools and public systems of learning, CLEA creates direct pathways to postsecondary study. This year, 159 students in eight West Bank high schools took seminars on critical thinking and 120 students participated in civic engagement workshops that allowed them to meet in person and exchange ideas. The program received a U.S. State

Department grant to support the work, a recognition of the importance of creating and sustaining these opportunities in Palestine. TSI and BEC have built a faculty mentorship program with 12 BEC faculty fellows paired with early college faculty at TSI, designing eight community engaged liberal arts and sciences courses. CLEA has extended the core element of the program to high schools across Bishkek, reaching 300 under-resourced students in over 40% of the city’s public high schools.

Consortium For The Liberal Arts In Prison

The Bard Prison Initiative’s (BPI) Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison is growing a global communityof-practice with 22 programs participating across 14 nations and six continents, including educators from Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad, Australia, Italy, Mexico, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Community partners share knowledge and experiences through virtual webinars and a popular online lecture series organized by BPI’s first Global Research Fellow, based in Argentina. The series features leading international scholars and practitioners working in fields related to education in prison in the international or transnational context. Some global grantees have also participated in The BPI Summer Residency at Bard College Annandale and attended the first global meeting of its kind in Buenos Aires in April, hosted by the University of San Martin CUSAM. The Consortium has also awarded capacity-building grants to eight domestic partner institutions and 12 international associates, in an effort to boost local practitioners’ ability to foster, sustain, and grow educational endeavors in carceral spaces based on their specific needs.

Osun Members

Colleges And Universities

Al-Quds University/Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine)

American University of Afghanistan (Afghanistan)

American University of Beirut (Lebanon)

American University in Bulgaria

American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan)

Arizona State University (United States)

Ashesi University (Ghana)

Bard College at Simon’s Rock: The Early College (United States)

Bard College Berlin (Germany)

Bard Early Colleges (United States)

Birkbeck: University of London (United Kingdom)

Bocconi University (Italy)

BRAC University (Bangladesh)

European Humanities University (Lithuania)

European University Institute (Italy)

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Switzerland)

Hertie School (Germany)

Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine)

London School of Economics (United Kingdom)

National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan)

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania)

Parami University (Myanmar)

Sciences Po in Paris (France)

SOAS University of London (United Kingdom)

Tuskegee University (United States)

Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

University of the West Indies (Jamaica)

University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Research And Educational Institutions

Bard Prison Initiative (United States)

Black Mountains College (United Kingdom)

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (United States)

Chatham House (United Kingdom)

Haitian Education and Leadership Program (Haiti)

Institute for New Economic Thinking (United States and United Kingdom)

Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade (Serbia)

Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Austria)

Picker Center for Executive Education, Columbia University (United States)

Princeton Global History Lab (United States)

Rift Valley Institute (Kenya)

The Afghanistan Project at the Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh (United States)

The Talloires Network of Engaged Universities (United States)

University of California, Berkeley Human Rights Center (United States)

University of Connecticut Human Rights Institute (United States)

Osun Programs

Birkbeck Critical Theory

Summer School

Center for Human Rights & the Arts

Center for Liberal Arts and Science Pedagogy

Chatham House Academy

Fellowships

Civic Engagement Initiative

Co-designing Accessible Cities

Collaborating For Rural Sustainability

Collaborative for Liberal Education for Adolescents

Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison

Democracy Institute

Developing Teaching Professionals for Global Higher Education

Economic Democracy Initiative

English Learner Success in Content Classrooms

Enhanced Network Teacher

Education Capacity

Experimental Humanities

Collaborative Network

Faculty Mobility

GEOHub

Global Corruption Observatory

Global Debate Network

Global Health and Human Rights

Global History Lab

Global Institute of Advanced Study

Global Observatory on Academic Freedom

Global Studies Program

Global Teaching Fellowship Program

Hannah Arendt Humanities Network

Hubs for Connected Learning

Initiatives

International Early College

Commons and Press

Interruptrr

Liberal Arts and Sciences

Collaborative

Library Resources Program

Microcollege for Just

Community Leadership

Open Learning Initiative

Open Society Research Platform

Open to Health

OSUN Certificate Programs

OSUN Courses

Policy Labs

Population Health Informatics

Professional Development Program for University Administrators

Rethinking Economic Policy to Address Inequality

Roma Equity in Higher Education Science Shop

Socrates Project

Solve Climate by 2030

Strengthening the Core

Student Life Initiatives

Program

Student Mobility

Summer University

Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative