Steps
This interactive diagram sets out four key steps that have been identified by the BHER consortium. Use your cursor to select any of the boxes below to obtain further information (which opens a new browser tab). Try clicking on "Interest and Need".
Interest and Need
We hope that the BHER research that we have described below, will provide you with some ideas about the contextual types of research that you may want to accomplish as you develop a model to deliver on-line and on-site courses to refugee and other marginalized populations.
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Research
Research is central to what universities do. BHER built on research on long-term exile to examine why higher education was mostly unavailable to refugees and how this could be changed.
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Outreach
Networking with other interested and concerned people and institutions internationally was an essential activity to the development of the BHER project.
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Resource Mobilization
Once it was clear to us that there was a need for university education expressed by people living in the Dadaab camps, and there was an interest on the part of some international agencies and universities, we began to work with various people and funding agencies to further think through the possibility of delivery higher education to people living in refugee camps. Most projects in universities require mainly research related funding. While the BHER project needed research funding in its early stages, non-research funding for the development of the project was essential to the development and delivery of of university programs.
Working with Funders
As with other university based projects, in its early stages, BHER began with research funding to develop an understanding of who was already working this field and what had been accomplished thus far. We then moved onto other development funding.
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Bringing People Together
Through several workshops we brought academics, international agency workers and non-governmental agencies together to think about needs and gaps.
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Program Development
We worked intensively with our Partners on curriculum and pedagogical development, as well as various policies and principles that would guide our work together in BHER.
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Process Involved
At the university, departmental levels and with on-the ground with NGOs, there are many pedagogical and practical processes in which BHER partners engage to develop programming.
Curriculum Development
Curriculum and pedagogical development included intensive working session with partners to ensure that we had shared understanding of credit recognition, timing of course offerings and other complex issues.
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Project Policies
BHER principles or “policies” guided the work of the BHER partner institutions and students who engaged in BHER related university programs.
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Delivery Through the Partnership
The BHER initiative has been developed through the mobilization of a multi-stakeholder Partnership, also described as a voluntary network of like-minded academic and a non-governmental organization that seek to take educational assets where they are available and deliver them to where they are needed. The roll-out of this undertaking involved the work of staff, instructors, university administrators, and others who reported to the BHER Partnership, as described in our Organizational Chart.
Implementation of BHER Model
The implementation of the BHER Model in a long-term and insecure refugee camps was and is a complex undertaking that required the development of a number of protocols and procedures to ensure the safety of students, staff and instructors.
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Delivery of Specific Academic Programs
Governance
BHER Project governance operates at four distinct but interrelated levels: 1) Project Partners, 2) Project Leads and Directors, 3) Project Staff and 4) BHER Students.
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