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IULM Project - InZone

Starting from autumn 2022, Università IULM has been taking part in the training project for students living in the Azraq refugee camp (Jordan) and Kakuma refugee camp (Kenya), in collaboration with the University of Geneva, within the framework of their InZone programme.

InZone has been operating for around 15 years in a humanitarian context in the refugee camps of Azraq and Kakuma, where the project team has set up an actual campus and continues to develop targeted teaching, meeting the needs of the students, with courses both in-person and by distance learning.

The main goals of the project are:

  • Offer credit bearing certifying courses
  • More inclusion through innovation
  • Empower refugees/migrants living in disadvantaged conditions

For refugee-camp-based students, the expected outcomes of the InZone programme can be summarized as follows:

  • Direct cognitive (knowledge and skills) and academic (credits, data and ideas) impact: Critical thinking, learning skills, curiosity, innovative thinking, contributing to the discovery of knowledge, developing the capacity to follow long-course degree programmes (as a bridge to higher education scholarships)
  • Economic impact: access to jobs (voluntary positions within the camps and/or long-term solutions outside the camps), running one’s own business, setting up SMEs etc.
  • Enhancement of individual resilience: confidence and self-esteem, hope for the future, planning ahead and overcoming future challenges, social ties and the feeling of being useful and connected to others, making their own decisions and acting independently, both as individuals and as a community.
  • Impact on the role and image of refugees in the camps and host communities (empowerment): The ability to make oneself heard and to engage in collective decisions, leadership abilities.
  • Sustainable development and communities: meeting community needs, creating community-based projects and/or organizations, social and technical innovation etc.

 IULM's pilot project

IULM has been organizing two 30h online courses, in English for a class composed of 11 students with a heterogeneous background. The purpose of these pilot courses is to provide basic principles that can be further developed in more structured subsequent courses.

The first course proposed by IULM consists of the following lessons:

  • Professional English - Dr. Anna Re;
  • Sociology of media - Prof. Andrea Miconi;
  • Information systems and digital trends - Prof. Andrea Carignani;
  • Data analysis and data visualisation - Prof. Emma Zavarrone;
  • Semiotics - Prof. Francesco Galofaro.

The second course will be structured as follows:

  • Strategy and Management;
  • Data Analysis for Communication;
  • Social Media relations Management;
  • Sociology of media.