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Refugee Fellow tells about her experience as a scholarship holder

While searching for data on fellowship programs for exiled youth, I found a recent interview with a Palestinian refugee. She is currently working in Lebanon as a gender and gender-based-violence (GBV) coordinator at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Although recognized as a human rights issue by the United Nations for a long time, legal and structural efforts to fight GBV gained traction from the late 1990s throughout the 2000s.

This Palestinian refugee was awarded in 2019 from the Chevening Scholarship to study in the UK in the field of Development and Emergency Practice. The Chevening Scholarship program was founded in 1983 by the British government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and runs with the purpose of “creating lasting positive relationships with future leaders, influencers, and decision-makers, which become valuable soft power networks”.

The refugee fellow tells in the interview on one hand how this unique experience broadened her views and improved her skills and on the other hand how she tried to shift other people’s perspectives about migrant communities through her work and personal story. Reading her personal account, the idea of “return to homeland” (in her case, to the host country in Lebanon) and education are playing the key role to help those in needs in her host country thanks to the acquired skills and experiences made during the fellowship time. As she says, “I want to be a role model for women in refugee communities. I believe in the power of education; I believe that education can change lives (…)”.

https://www.chevening.org/news/study-in-the-uk/