A Discussion with Matthew Stevens, Country Director of Jesuit Refugee Services Jordan and Project Director for JRS Higher Education, Amman, Jordan
With: Matthew Stevens Berkley Center Profile
June 9, 2016
Background: As a part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in June 2016 student Jonathan Thrall interviewed Matthew Stevens, the country director of Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Jordan and project director for JRS Higher Education (JC:HEM). In this interview, conducted at the JRS Higher Education Center in Amman, Stevens discusses the history and nature of the work of JRS in Jordan, the organization’s commitment to inclusive service and fostering hope and community, the disproportionately high rate of resettlement amongst JRS students, and the challenges in reconciling institutional visions and designs with the needs of those for whom the programs are intended.
Could you please introduce yourself?
My name is Matthew Stevens. I am the country director of JRS Jordan and project director for JRS Higher Education [here in Jordan].
Could you tell me about your background?
I did my master’s research through the Department of Geography of York University in Toronto, in fellowship with the Center for Refugee Studies there. I worked briefly for CARE before starting with JRS, and so now here I am.
Could you tell me about the background of JRS in Jordan?
Keep in mind that I’ve only been here a year, and so there are a lot of things that happened before I came. JRS...for a long time there was a very large informal education program that hosted between 500 and 1,000 students, I believe, in a school in a neighborhood [of Amman called] Ashrafieh. It’s a Greek Melkite school, and we were teaching in shifts, so we would take the early evening shift. That was kind of the big cornerstone of what JRS was for a long time.
Those classes were taught by foreign graduate student researchers—JRS had a great reputation with the [foreign] research community. And in 2011, JC:HEM sites started being opened up through JRS partners in Dzaleka camp in Malawi, Kakuma camp in Kenya, and at a school in Aleppo. And of course, in late 2011, it was determined that [Aleppo] was no longer a good place to offer the diploma program that was being constructed at that time, so they moved it here [to Amman].
And initially it was housed in the Ashrafieh school, but they quickly found that they didn’t have enough space and that a new center would be ideal. And so the Jesuit community here was kind enough to donate a piece of their garden for us to build a little two-room schoolhouse. The diploma program commenced in 2012 with 22 students—seven of which graduated just last year, 11 of which were resettled.
Since that time, it’s grown a lot. We’ve implemented the [Community Service Learning Track {CSLT}] program, which for a long time was just one class, 25 students, but we’ve grown that up to 4, for 100 students a term. The diploma program has grown, so now we let in between 25 and 35 students a year. And we’re just about to start our fourth cohort of students.
When did the Ashrafieh school close down?
It closed last year [2015]. What ended up happening, long story short, it grew too big. There was no formal [Memorandum of Understanding] with the school that it was in, and yeah, it grew quite quickly under the previous country director, but the staff of the school weren’t properly consulted, I guess. So they chose to ask us to leave, which is unfortunate. It really was a blow to the Sudanese community here, especially. We’re looking at opening new programs—similar, but probably smaller sites, scattered around Amman. But that probably will be late this year or early next.
So one of the main activities of the Ashrafieh school was the English classes. Have those been substituted by the CSLT English courses through JC:HEM?
Yes, but then we introduced an informal program [at the new center, alongside the formal CSLT courses] that is in the Ashrafieh style, much more so.
So what is the relationship between JRS and JC:HEM?
So we are JC:HEM’s implementing partner. Essentially, we purchase content from them and deliver it at the school. So the CSLTs and the diploma program are JC:HEM. The informal [English courses] is just us; we’ve created it. All the staff, though, are JRS staff. The center is a JRS center.
And so what are the main activities of JRS Jordan?
Right now? Primarily, it’s JC:HEM [programs run through JRS Higher Education], with an eye towards other higher education opportunities as well, both formal and informal.
We also run a home visits program. And that really is just starting now. We had it kind of running in a hibernation mode for the last few months, but it’s coming into full force this month and next. And, you know, one of the principles of JRS is accompaniment. So it’s primarily an accompaniment program: teams go visit people in their homes, spend some time with them, talk to them. We have forms, but we don’t bring the forms out in the household. People write in a journal and just talk, and then they come back to the office and fill out the forms. And the idea being that, yes, there is some financial support available, but we are more interested in both, I guess you could say, psychosocial support, but also referrals, things like that. And then finances are if there’s nothing else that can be done.
Is that an issue of JRS’ funding capacity?
Yeah, and we don’t want the emphasis on the money. So many agencies go to people’s homes, and they take a form and you tick off the boxes, and if you get the right boxes, you get some cash. And we don’t want it to be that. We want it to be: we’re coming to hang out with you, make you feel like maybe, you know, life is something close to normal for a little while. And then if you get some cash on the side, that’s great.
And how does JRS connect with these families in general?
It’s mostly word of mouth; that’s kind of our usual method of outreach. And that’s just because we’re small. In the past, we have done outreach programs and things like that, but we’ve just found right now that there are more people coming to us than we can serve already, so why encourage more to call us.
We serve anyone, without discriminating based on passport or status. So I mean, we had a Uighur student from China at one point. We have one Eritrean student now. We’ve served people from places like Kuwait, and someone from Ukraine that we were working with for a while. Just people from all sorts of different backgrounds. And yes, the emphasis is obviously on refugees. And in that capacity we serve mostly Sudanese and Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians. Although, not primarily Syrians, to be honest. Many agencies serve only Syrians, and we have found that there is so much need in other groups.
Primarily we serve families. We do have some funding for individuals, especially Sudanese, because they tend to be single men. But primarily families, for the home visits program.
Is there overlap between people that benefit from this service and students at JRS Higher Education?
For sure, yeah. So we’re looking to distribute some money to a family, actually, a husband and wife who are part of the diploma program, that the wife is pregnant and will be having a baby soon. We’ve had other students visited, and we do ad hoc support, as well. So I had a student who was having trouble reading his homework. Well, we find out he needs an eye exam and glasses, so we know an optometrist, and we hooked him up with a pair of glasses. Things like that, you know?
And I hear that JRS students also volunteer to conduct the home visits?
So one thing that JRS globally—and that Jesuit Ignatian pedagogy—focuses on is this idea that people should be feeding what they learn back into their communities. Of course, in this context, it’s really difficult for us to provide extensive structures to offer that. We have found it possible to offer a few incentive-based volunteering positions to former graduates, especially as one of our CSLT courses through JC:HEM is a psychosocial case management class. So [it] provides a good justification for picking up students into these positions.
And so the students who have enrolled in the home visits program, have they taken the psychosocial case management course?
All of them have. But the challenge is that we will have eight positions. We have six open right now. And of course, we’ve got close to 100 graduates from that program, and more all the time. [And] good students who haven’t taken that course and who probably would be excellent at the job, as well.
But I’ve heard that many of the students who have taken that class end up applying some of what they’ve learned within their communities, by their own initiative. There’s lots of ways that students are able to take these things and use them in their communities, for sure.
You mentioned Ignatian pedagogy. I’m interested in how that plays out in JC:HEM and this aspect of community service?
That’s the hardest part really, especially when you’re learning English. How do you bring that back into the community? Again, we used to run a teacher training class. But, for one, that was uncomfortably close to vocational training, which is a very sticky political thing here. And also it’s a little bit unfair to give people specifically vocational training when they don’t have the opportunity to use it very often. We’ve talked about things like getting a volunteer club running, but it’s proven to be difficult administratively. I mean, just the students need more support, and it’s nobody’s job, so you need someone specifically to do that.
But one of the assignments for the English class, for example, is they go into their community and take photos of three places that are important to [them] and describe why. And it’s not so much, how would I say… like that’s a reflective benefit to the community, right? It’s not so much going into the community and doing something great, but sort of thinking about why this place is important and how you engage with it, and being a little more conscious in how that interaction takes place.
And so that aspect of transforming learning into serviceable action is something that’s a big part of the learning at the center?
Sure, yeah. And the diploma, of course, also. It includes courses on things like intercultural communication, right? The idea being that connections should be built between different communities. Actually, the introductory course also has a huge emphasis on breaking down the boundaries between different student groups. And that I think, honestly, is something that we don’t do enough. That we put quite a bit of focus on, but… I don’t think you can put enough focus on that, because it is so important. It really is.
As a Jesuit organization, what role does faith play in your work here in Jordan?
JRS is a faith-based organization, of course. Locally though, in Jordan, we have to affirm that our programming does not include any religious content. Really, this is a good thing. It helps to ensure that all faith-based organizations work with people from any background in a respectable way. But JRS doesn’t have much trouble with that internationally. It’s part of what we do. We don’t discriminate based on faith. We serve anyone. But the root faith of JRS is reflected in its values of dignity and compassion. This is the core tenet of accompaniment. We really try to maintain humanity in what we do, as opposed to just kind of ticking off boxes, filling in forms, for the people we serve. I mean, we don’t even call them “beneficiaries”; we call them the people we serve.
How is your position running JRS here in Jordan in relation to other JRS activities, regionally, worldwide? What are the partnerships with other sites, or to what extent do you collaborate or share assessment and experiences?
To be honest, probably not as much as we should. But that’s probably because partly because JRS Higher Ed only operates here in Amman. In Lebanon, for example, they run four schools in the Bekaa Valley, primary schools. Which is something that, here, the government has been doing, not a perfect job, but a reasonably good job of offering primary and secondary schooling to refugees—and irrespective of background. And so to me it doesn’t make sense for us to move in that direction. Whereas, in Lebanon, it’s a different story. The infrastructure is a lot more taxed because there are a lot more people. But twice a year I meet with all the country directors. We go to Beirut and sit with the regional director and compare notes, see what’s worked and what hasn’t, share ideas.
What are the biggest challenges you, or the organization, face?
A very interesting challenge, actually, was getting JC:HEM to understand that the other two original [JRS/JC:HEM] sites are camp-based sites. And this is an urban-based site and, you know, the budget’s completely different; the students’ needs are completely different.
Could you speak more about these differences?
Well, so, for example, in a camp you don’t have the work issue. People might work, but they’re definitely not working 12-hour days. People aren’t faced with the question of, "Well, do I go hungry, or do I go to school?" Because food is provided in a camp—maybe not very good food, but still. Transportation is very different; I used to say transportation is not an issue in the camp. That’s not true. It’s just a different issue, because the camps are huge, and sometimes it is difficult to get around them, and sometimes you do have to run buses and that’s—different agencies have different problems with that. Us less so. But, I mean, here it’s our number one expense, I think after staffing, is transportation. It’s huge. And that’s something that’s very difficult to make donors understand.
I think—questions of prejudice, for example. This school is a safe space. I mean, yes, that is certainly something prevalent in other sites, but here, when you have students, what’s the classic quote that they always say? That "This is the only place we feel normal." I don’t think that you see that as much in other sites. Yeah, really a big thing is getting people to understand these different challenges in the different sites, different contexts. And also convincing the donors to support Jordanians. Right, if you’re in a camp, you’re not—Kakuma is not serving a lot of Kenyans, right? But here we should be putting more emphasis on putting Jordanians in the classroom, if only to build better bridges between communities, right?
I could also add that that ties into space. Definitely, that’s a challenge that relates to the camp/city thing, but it’s also its own separate thing, too. It’s just a different challenge. In a camp you can just build a different structure, and that might cost a lot of money, it might be difficult to arrange, but here, you know, rent, or what, and where are you going to go, and where is it going to be located in the city—permissions are very different. So that’s one of our big problems right now, is where we put the students. We could be teaching a lot more people if we had bigger rooms and more rooms.
Other challenges that come to mind?
Building community is a challenge—building communities together. I mean one thing that I would really like to look at doing, which is partly why I want to build or start opening new centers in different parts of the city, is because, what’s the point of bussing people here to make friends when they live so far apart, and transportation is so expensive that they can never afford to see each other outside of the school? You never will build community in that way. And so it makes a lot more sense to me to actually drastically reduce transportation and start opening many centers closer to [students]. And that’s something that, partly because the Ashrafieh school was this huge center that was drawing people from large distances, JRS has been kind of stuck in this mindset of bringing people to the center. But I would much rather bring the education to these different communities. And not to say that Ashrafieh or Jabal Hussein [aren’t great places for a center]—yeah, there’s a lot of refugees here, but there’s a lot of refugees in a lot of places.
It’s interesting to hear you speak of community building as a challenge. Hearing from students, they seem to feel like it’s working at the center!
Oh yeah, and that’s Natalie [Khoury, the academic officer]! It’s not always been like that. She fights and fights and fights. One of the things that was really interesting, actually, was that under the previous project director, they had about 30 diploma students, and they had two or three CSLTs. So they had far fewer students. And they could give a lot of personal time to each student, and there was a lot sitting and talking and hanging out and just. socializing. And that built that. And then suddenly Natalie and I took over right when the student population exploded, and now we have something like 70 active diploma students and a hundred active CSLT students and an informal program. We are hoping that the informal classes will be a lot bigger, so that will be around 100 as well. [But the difficulty with the informal program is to keep students attending despite it being informal.]
For the diploma program, you have high attrition rates, correct?
That 70 number comes from how many individuals have registered throughout the year, but yeah, usually there are between 30 and 60 [students who follow through continuously].
So is attrition an issue?
Well, that’s an interesting question, an interesting challenge. Yes and no...it depends on your conceptualization. So most of our attrition is actually due to resettlement, both through scholarships or through the [International Organization for Migration] (traditional resettlement). I don’t think that’s an issue; I think that’s a success. But there’s been some resistance to that idea. Because of course it is important to show high graduation numbers, right? But what do they, the people that actually take the program, want? And of course they don’t want to sit there for three years and then be faced with imprisonment, deportation, you know, just general abuse, poverty...it goes on and on. They want to get out of here as soon as possible.
Yeah, this has come across almost all the interviews I’ve conducted here: that Jordan is like this place in between.
Well, it is, and by design! It is not supposed to be a welcoming place for refugees. And it makes sense! When you go back in time, there was a civil war here in the 1970s because they let all the Palestinians in. And you know that, thank goodness, has turned into something good now. But you can see how that would make the government a little bit insecure about making this place too comfortable for people. And you do have this sort of tension, where [the government thinks] "We want people to be safe. We want people to be fed. We want people to be happy enough that they don’t protest. We also don’t want people to get too comfy." And, I mean, this will happen; it’s kind of inevitable that this will happen.
Keep in mind that I’m not saying that it’s a bad decision, that the government is doing something wrong. It’s just, who’s the actor, and what’s the actor’s goals, right? I mean, yeah, sure, you, me, JRS, we’re here to support people who are refugees, and so our entire purpose and motivation is to make sure that they have the best life possible. But the government has a totally different interest, motivation, need. They’re here to project Jordan, for Jordanians first. And so yeah, sure there’s tension there, but that’s natural.
In terms of resettlement and Jordan being a temporary home for students, how does community building work in that context?
That’s a challenge. It’s something that we butt our heads against a lot. I mean, JC:HEM as an organization does not aim to feed resettlement programs. Which makes sense, it’s sad to say, but makes sense in a site where a very small fraction of people will be resettled [like in many camps]. But students overwhelmingly do see this program as a pathway to resettlement and might hope for us to better address that need.
Here you have to take both a different view of community, in a temporal sense but also the spatial sense. So this is online education, right? And communities, now, they transcend borders, and we have students, Somali students, Sudanese students, who want to go back home. And even if they go to Canada, or Australia, or America, they don’t really want to stay there. I mean, many probably come with that idea and they will, but you probably have interviewed a few students actually, who have such a passionate drive to go back and do work in the place that they are originally from. And is that community? I think that, in a definition, it is.
I mean, one of the other things that is right there in Ignatian pedagogy is the definition of community is for the learner to decide—not for us to decide.
And so does, at some point, the ethos of building community at the center then also translate into preparing these students for resettlement?
In some ways, yeah. [Although,] I mean, formally, no. But I think that really, especially the diploma program, yes. One of the things that happens is that the diploma students, they have academic credentials. So they can apply to scholarships, etc. [World University Service Canada {WUSC}] knows us, for example. They know that we’re good. And that’s very clear, something that’s very easy to see.
Something that’s harder to see, harder to measure, is the impact of our program on other pathways to resettlement. And I personally believe there is. But I’ll be honest: it’s speculation in a lot of ways. Part of it is that the refugee status determination officer at UNHCR is looking for something, and it’s calibrated to a Western mindset—to a certain cultural structure, where you’re supposed to come and you’re supposed to dispassionately relay all the awful things that have brought you to this place, and it should be clinical, and it should be exact. So you have more than one interview, and you should say exactly the same things and have the exact same dates. Everything has to be packaged properly and identically. In any interaction that you have with the UNHCR or a foreign government or anything like that. And that is something that we do kind of teach. I mean, we have a course on intercultural communication, which I think is huge. We teach people to write reports that get them grades in American universities.
And so I think that through all of this—what I would say is that when people sit in that UNHCR office, or the Canadian embassy office, they know better how to give the people what they’re looking for. And I’m sure you’ve seen this in your interviews: people learn to joke in English, and be funny in English, and be likable in English! There are things that are funny and fun in Arabic that aren’t funny and fun in English, and people learn about that stuff! I mean there’s a lot more to it than learning a language, right? The whole cultural immersion that we offer is—
So you do see a positive impact of the program on students’ chances at resettlement?
I think [with non-traditional, scholarship resettlement], it’s a direct link that you can see very easily. You know, I can find quotes and information that would prove that. Whereas with this other thing, the influence of the program on formal or traditional pathways of resettlement, it’s harder to empirically prove.
We know we have a 50 percent resettlement rate. Which, when you compare to the 0.1 percent that everyone else gets, is statistically off the charts! A large part of that is WUSC. [But] the question for me is, okay, how many of our students, firstly, are [already] so far along with the resettlement process that we don’t really have any impact on that? And secondly, are we artificially selecting students who are succeeding? Are we making their outcomes better, or are we just looking for the same things in our admissions interviews that are what [resettlement officers] are looking for, and of course that would make our stats way higher?
And again, probably the majority of it is scholarships, and so I still stand behind the fact that this is a really good way to get out of the country. And I think a lot of the Sudanese students, especially, who have no resettlement options—I mean, that’s why they kill themselves to do this work, right? It's because they see it as a way out. I mean, we have students [who] work 12 hour days, and then come to the center for three hours, and then go home and study and sleep for a couple hours, and then get up to do it again. That drive comes from the desire to escape, not because they want to learn about stoichiometry.
I’m interested in this challenge—implementing a program which is developed, designed off-site, internationally, in a very different context, and then reconciling that design with what the students want from the program and that you would like to gear it towards.
The endless struggle with any NGO is communicating the desires of the students up and then reconciling that with the desires of the donors and the people who design the programming, make the decisions. JRS is really concerned about the fact that JC:HEM, that those diploma credits, aren’t recognized in Jordan. The students, some students care, but clearly enough students don’t care about accreditation in Jordan that we can fill the program. So why is it that this pressure is coming from above? Why worry about accreditation in Jordan if none of the students can afford to do their last year of university at [the University of Jordan] and get their bachelor’s degree? And if they could—say we offered scholarships, paid their tuition—it would be way more expensive to run, and still they couldn’t get a work permit! So what’s the point? Well, it’s the soft skills, right? The value of this is not what—it’s not graduation, it’s not accreditation—it’s what are the students here saying: we joined this program, we love this program, for these other reasons, you know what I mean? And there’s a huge disconnect there.
What would be some ideal improvements or improvements that are in the works?
For JRS Higher Ed? Again, [bringing learning] closer to communities. It’s interesting what you say about the students liking the central spot, too.
But part of that is just space. [Currently there’s] not enough space to even begin to approach serving the demand. We never will be able to, of course. But there’s no reason that the program could not be significantly larger, except that the space is small. And also, the idea for this year has always been to divert funding away from transportation and towards rent and salaries. So more students served for the same amount of money. That hasn’t really happened, but that’s the goal.
I also really would like to expand the informal programming. I guess I kind of see it as a pyramid: the CSLT classes, well, they’re a preparation for the diploma, and there’s many more CSLT students than there will ever be diploma students. And again, the diploma students are looking at this as a way out. And to me, you know, one of our core mandates is hope, right? And being able to see this path of CSLT to diploma, diploma to escape—that you can be in CSLT and get value from someone else getting resettled. I mean obviously there’s frustrations and emotional ups and downs, but that idea that, yes, you can see a path towards an intervention that you are actually actively pursuing, instead of just sitting around and waiting.
And as an extension of that, these informal programs could be a much larger base of that pyramid. You can serve a lot more people for cheap. And again, it’s not all about the money, but at some level it’s a part of it, you have to think about how can we reach the most people. And, again, we will never reach enough, so if we can implement a program for a small amount of money that will help people see this path to something better, then I think that’s something we have to pursue.
I would really like to start implementing programs, or these [informal] classes specifically, in the style of Ashrafieh. So finding potential foreign volunteers who are willing to work for nothing, basically. And go into different communities and bring the resources and the value.
In your view, what’s the importance of higher education for refugees when they can’t work?
I think we’ve talked about that. One of them is filling your time. Higher education, any education, is something you can take with you. And there is a lot of emphasis in NGOs, the aid agencies, on education up to 18 years old, but what happens when you turn 18? The Iraqis put it into perspective very well, that education is not seen as something in Iraq that stops when you’re 18. And then, "Sorry, well, you’re a refugee now. Forget your plans to pursue something bigger…?"
But yeah, I think one of them is filling time. Another is soft skills. I mean learning things that make your life better no matter what you do, whether that’s computer skills, English skills, communication skills. A lot of it [is] we bridge the line between learning center and community center. You know, it’s a place where people come to feel good about themselves. And that’s huge.
And for some students—[we had a student who] really struggled when she finished [the diploma program], because most of our graduates had found stuff to do with their time, and she didn’t. And to be part of this community for three years and then one day you’re just like, "Okay, done, bye! Now you’re back at home." That was really difficult for her. That’s something that we will have to confront more and more.
Especially when they don’t get resettled.
Yeah. And, well, you know the heartening thing about it is, I think, of that first cohort, [she] is the only one that is in that position. Or at least the only one that has really identified herself to us. So others do have informal work and, as I say, it does tend to be better than [smoking shisha] or working in a factory or something.
Because of the diploma?
Again, you know, is it because of the diploma, or is it because of skills they had before, or what? It’s hard to say. But, there’s definitely correlation, yeah.
What’s your greatest motivation for working here?
Oh gosh, the students! Really, it’s the students. And trying to connect the students with things that they want and need. [And ultimately, it’s not the institutional expectations that come first, but] what matters is [the students], that’s the motivation. And to be honest, getting people out. Maybe it’s different in other sites, but here, especially for the Sudanese—like I say, something bad will happen [within the three years of studying here in Jordan]. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. And that’s hard to confront. But it’s an inevitability.
What does social justice mean to you? And how does it play out at the center?
Why I like JRS is that they have this set of core values. Compassion, hope, dignity, solidarity, hospitality, justice, and participation are the values of JRS. And to me, I think social justice is really about just treating people like people, in a lot of ways. And recognizing that they have goals and hopes and dreams, the same as you. And you might be in a different position, maybe less able to act on those things, but that people aren’t “different.” The refugee isn’t “different,” you know what I mean? It’s just a different setting.
My name is Matthew Stevens. I am the country director of JRS Jordan and project director for JRS Higher Education [here in Jordan].
Could you tell me about your background?
I did my master’s research through the Department of Geography of York University in Toronto, in fellowship with the Center for Refugee Studies there. I worked briefly for CARE before starting with JRS, and so now here I am.
Could you tell me about the background of JRS in Jordan?
Keep in mind that I’ve only been here a year, and so there are a lot of things that happened before I came. JRS...for a long time there was a very large informal education program that hosted between 500 and 1,000 students, I believe, in a school in a neighborhood [of Amman called] Ashrafieh. It’s a Greek Melkite school, and we were teaching in shifts, so we would take the early evening shift. That was kind of the big cornerstone of what JRS was for a long time.
Those classes were taught by foreign graduate student researchers—JRS had a great reputation with the [foreign] research community. And in 2011, JC:HEM sites started being opened up through JRS partners in Dzaleka camp in Malawi, Kakuma camp in Kenya, and at a school in Aleppo. And of course, in late 2011, it was determined that [Aleppo] was no longer a good place to offer the diploma program that was being constructed at that time, so they moved it here [to Amman].
And initially it was housed in the Ashrafieh school, but they quickly found that they didn’t have enough space and that a new center would be ideal. And so the Jesuit community here was kind enough to donate a piece of their garden for us to build a little two-room schoolhouse. The diploma program commenced in 2012 with 22 students—seven of which graduated just last year, 11 of which were resettled.
Since that time, it’s grown a lot. We’ve implemented the [Community Service Learning Track {CSLT}] program, which for a long time was just one class, 25 students, but we’ve grown that up to 4, for 100 students a term. The diploma program has grown, so now we let in between 25 and 35 students a year. And we’re just about to start our fourth cohort of students.
When did the Ashrafieh school close down?
It closed last year [2015]. What ended up happening, long story short, it grew too big. There was no formal [Memorandum of Understanding] with the school that it was in, and yeah, it grew quite quickly under the previous country director, but the staff of the school weren’t properly consulted, I guess. So they chose to ask us to leave, which is unfortunate. It really was a blow to the Sudanese community here, especially. We’re looking at opening new programs—similar, but probably smaller sites, scattered around Amman. But that probably will be late this year or early next.
So one of the main activities of the Ashrafieh school was the English classes. Have those been substituted by the CSLT English courses through JC:HEM?
Yes, but then we introduced an informal program [at the new center, alongside the formal CSLT courses] that is in the Ashrafieh style, much more so.
So what is the relationship between JRS and JC:HEM?
So we are JC:HEM’s implementing partner. Essentially, we purchase content from them and deliver it at the school. So the CSLTs and the diploma program are JC:HEM. The informal [English courses] is just us; we’ve created it. All the staff, though, are JRS staff. The center is a JRS center.
And so what are the main activities of JRS Jordan?
Right now? Primarily, it’s JC:HEM [programs run through JRS Higher Education], with an eye towards other higher education opportunities as well, both formal and informal.
We also run a home visits program. And that really is just starting now. We had it kind of running in a hibernation mode for the last few months, but it’s coming into full force this month and next. And, you know, one of the principles of JRS is accompaniment. So it’s primarily an accompaniment program: teams go visit people in their homes, spend some time with them, talk to them. We have forms, but we don’t bring the forms out in the household. People write in a journal and just talk, and then they come back to the office and fill out the forms. And the idea being that, yes, there is some financial support available, but we are more interested in both, I guess you could say, psychosocial support, but also referrals, things like that. And then finances are if there’s nothing else that can be done.
Is that an issue of JRS’ funding capacity?
Yeah, and we don’t want the emphasis on the money. So many agencies go to people’s homes, and they take a form and you tick off the boxes, and if you get the right boxes, you get some cash. And we don’t want it to be that. We want it to be: we’re coming to hang out with you, make you feel like maybe, you know, life is something close to normal for a little while. And then if you get some cash on the side, that’s great.
And how does JRS connect with these families in general?
It’s mostly word of mouth; that’s kind of our usual method of outreach. And that’s just because we’re small. In the past, we have done outreach programs and things like that, but we’ve just found right now that there are more people coming to us than we can serve already, so why encourage more to call us.
We serve anyone, without discriminating based on passport or status. So I mean, we had a Uighur student from China at one point. We have one Eritrean student now. We’ve served people from places like Kuwait, and someone from Ukraine that we were working with for a while. Just people from all sorts of different backgrounds. And yes, the emphasis is obviously on refugees. And in that capacity we serve mostly Sudanese and Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians. Although, not primarily Syrians, to be honest. Many agencies serve only Syrians, and we have found that there is so much need in other groups.
Primarily we serve families. We do have some funding for individuals, especially Sudanese, because they tend to be single men. But primarily families, for the home visits program.
Is there overlap between people that benefit from this service and students at JRS Higher Education?
For sure, yeah. So we’re looking to distribute some money to a family, actually, a husband and wife who are part of the diploma program, that the wife is pregnant and will be having a baby soon. We’ve had other students visited, and we do ad hoc support, as well. So I had a student who was having trouble reading his homework. Well, we find out he needs an eye exam and glasses, so we know an optometrist, and we hooked him up with a pair of glasses. Things like that, you know?
And I hear that JRS students also volunteer to conduct the home visits?
So one thing that JRS globally—and that Jesuit Ignatian pedagogy—focuses on is this idea that people should be feeding what they learn back into their communities. Of course, in this context, it’s really difficult for us to provide extensive structures to offer that. We have found it possible to offer a few incentive-based volunteering positions to former graduates, especially as one of our CSLT courses through JC:HEM is a psychosocial case management class. So [it] provides a good justification for picking up students into these positions.
And so the students who have enrolled in the home visits program, have they taken the psychosocial case management course?
All of them have. But the challenge is that we will have eight positions. We have six open right now. And of course, we’ve got close to 100 graduates from that program, and more all the time. [And] good students who haven’t taken that course and who probably would be excellent at the job, as well.
But I’ve heard that many of the students who have taken that class end up applying some of what they’ve learned within their communities, by their own initiative. There’s lots of ways that students are able to take these things and use them in their communities, for sure.
You mentioned Ignatian pedagogy. I’m interested in how that plays out in JC:HEM and this aspect of community service?
That’s the hardest part really, especially when you’re learning English. How do you bring that back into the community? Again, we used to run a teacher training class. But, for one, that was uncomfortably close to vocational training, which is a very sticky political thing here. And also it’s a little bit unfair to give people specifically vocational training when they don’t have the opportunity to use it very often. We’ve talked about things like getting a volunteer club running, but it’s proven to be difficult administratively. I mean, just the students need more support, and it’s nobody’s job, so you need someone specifically to do that.
But one of the assignments for the English class, for example, is they go into their community and take photos of three places that are important to [them] and describe why. And it’s not so much, how would I say… like that’s a reflective benefit to the community, right? It’s not so much going into the community and doing something great, but sort of thinking about why this place is important and how you engage with it, and being a little more conscious in how that interaction takes place.
And so that aspect of transforming learning into serviceable action is something that’s a big part of the learning at the center?
Sure, yeah. And the diploma, of course, also. It includes courses on things like intercultural communication, right? The idea being that connections should be built between different communities. Actually, the introductory course also has a huge emphasis on breaking down the boundaries between different student groups. And that I think, honestly, is something that we don’t do enough. That we put quite a bit of focus on, but… I don’t think you can put enough focus on that, because it is so important. It really is.
As a Jesuit organization, what role does faith play in your work here in Jordan?
JRS is a faith-based organization, of course. Locally though, in Jordan, we have to affirm that our programming does not include any religious content. Really, this is a good thing. It helps to ensure that all faith-based organizations work with people from any background in a respectable way. But JRS doesn’t have much trouble with that internationally. It’s part of what we do. We don’t discriminate based on faith. We serve anyone. But the root faith of JRS is reflected in its values of dignity and compassion. This is the core tenet of accompaniment. We really try to maintain humanity in what we do, as opposed to just kind of ticking off boxes, filling in forms, for the people we serve. I mean, we don’t even call them “beneficiaries”; we call them the people we serve.
How is your position running JRS here in Jordan in relation to other JRS activities, regionally, worldwide? What are the partnerships with other sites, or to what extent do you collaborate or share assessment and experiences?
To be honest, probably not as much as we should. But that’s probably because partly because JRS Higher Ed only operates here in Amman. In Lebanon, for example, they run four schools in the Bekaa Valley, primary schools. Which is something that, here, the government has been doing, not a perfect job, but a reasonably good job of offering primary and secondary schooling to refugees—and irrespective of background. And so to me it doesn’t make sense for us to move in that direction. Whereas, in Lebanon, it’s a different story. The infrastructure is a lot more taxed because there are a lot more people. But twice a year I meet with all the country directors. We go to Beirut and sit with the regional director and compare notes, see what’s worked and what hasn’t, share ideas.
What are the biggest challenges you, or the organization, face?
A very interesting challenge, actually, was getting JC:HEM to understand that the other two original [JRS/JC:HEM] sites are camp-based sites. And this is an urban-based site and, you know, the budget’s completely different; the students’ needs are completely different.
Could you speak more about these differences?
Well, so, for example, in a camp you don’t have the work issue. People might work, but they’re definitely not working 12-hour days. People aren’t faced with the question of, "Well, do I go hungry, or do I go to school?" Because food is provided in a camp—maybe not very good food, but still. Transportation is very different; I used to say transportation is not an issue in the camp. That’s not true. It’s just a different issue, because the camps are huge, and sometimes it is difficult to get around them, and sometimes you do have to run buses and that’s—different agencies have different problems with that. Us less so. But, I mean, here it’s our number one expense, I think after staffing, is transportation. It’s huge. And that’s something that’s very difficult to make donors understand.
I think—questions of prejudice, for example. This school is a safe space. I mean, yes, that is certainly something prevalent in other sites, but here, when you have students, what’s the classic quote that they always say? That "This is the only place we feel normal." I don’t think that you see that as much in other sites. Yeah, really a big thing is getting people to understand these different challenges in the different sites, different contexts. And also convincing the donors to support Jordanians. Right, if you’re in a camp, you’re not—Kakuma is not serving a lot of Kenyans, right? But here we should be putting more emphasis on putting Jordanians in the classroom, if only to build better bridges between communities, right?
I could also add that that ties into space. Definitely, that’s a challenge that relates to the camp/city thing, but it’s also its own separate thing, too. It’s just a different challenge. In a camp you can just build a different structure, and that might cost a lot of money, it might be difficult to arrange, but here, you know, rent, or what, and where are you going to go, and where is it going to be located in the city—permissions are very different. So that’s one of our big problems right now, is where we put the students. We could be teaching a lot more people if we had bigger rooms and more rooms.
Other challenges that come to mind?
Building community is a challenge—building communities together. I mean one thing that I would really like to look at doing, which is partly why I want to build or start opening new centers in different parts of the city, is because, what’s the point of bussing people here to make friends when they live so far apart, and transportation is so expensive that they can never afford to see each other outside of the school? You never will build community in that way. And so it makes a lot more sense to me to actually drastically reduce transportation and start opening many centers closer to [students]. And that’s something that, partly because the Ashrafieh school was this huge center that was drawing people from large distances, JRS has been kind of stuck in this mindset of bringing people to the center. But I would much rather bring the education to these different communities. And not to say that Ashrafieh or Jabal Hussein [aren’t great places for a center]—yeah, there’s a lot of refugees here, but there’s a lot of refugees in a lot of places.
It’s interesting to hear you speak of community building as a challenge. Hearing from students, they seem to feel like it’s working at the center!
Oh yeah, and that’s Natalie [Khoury, the academic officer]! It’s not always been like that. She fights and fights and fights. One of the things that was really interesting, actually, was that under the previous project director, they had about 30 diploma students, and they had two or three CSLTs. So they had far fewer students. And they could give a lot of personal time to each student, and there was a lot sitting and talking and hanging out and just. socializing. And that built that. And then suddenly Natalie and I took over right when the student population exploded, and now we have something like 70 active diploma students and a hundred active CSLT students and an informal program. We are hoping that the informal classes will be a lot bigger, so that will be around 100 as well. [But the difficulty with the informal program is to keep students attending despite it being informal.]
For the diploma program, you have high attrition rates, correct?
That 70 number comes from how many individuals have registered throughout the year, but yeah, usually there are between 30 and 60 [students who follow through continuously].
So is attrition an issue?
Well, that’s an interesting question, an interesting challenge. Yes and no...it depends on your conceptualization. So most of our attrition is actually due to resettlement, both through scholarships or through the [International Organization for Migration] (traditional resettlement). I don’t think that’s an issue; I think that’s a success. But there’s been some resistance to that idea. Because of course it is important to show high graduation numbers, right? But what do they, the people that actually take the program, want? And of course they don’t want to sit there for three years and then be faced with imprisonment, deportation, you know, just general abuse, poverty...it goes on and on. They want to get out of here as soon as possible.
Yeah, this has come across almost all the interviews I’ve conducted here: that Jordan is like this place in between.
Well, it is, and by design! It is not supposed to be a welcoming place for refugees. And it makes sense! When you go back in time, there was a civil war here in the 1970s because they let all the Palestinians in. And you know that, thank goodness, has turned into something good now. But you can see how that would make the government a little bit insecure about making this place too comfortable for people. And you do have this sort of tension, where [the government thinks] "We want people to be safe. We want people to be fed. We want people to be happy enough that they don’t protest. We also don’t want people to get too comfy." And, I mean, this will happen; it’s kind of inevitable that this will happen.
Keep in mind that I’m not saying that it’s a bad decision, that the government is doing something wrong. It’s just, who’s the actor, and what’s the actor’s goals, right? I mean, yeah, sure, you, me, JRS, we’re here to support people who are refugees, and so our entire purpose and motivation is to make sure that they have the best life possible. But the government has a totally different interest, motivation, need. They’re here to project Jordan, for Jordanians first. And so yeah, sure there’s tension there, but that’s natural.
In terms of resettlement and Jordan being a temporary home for students, how does community building work in that context?
That’s a challenge. It’s something that we butt our heads against a lot. I mean, JC:HEM as an organization does not aim to feed resettlement programs. Which makes sense, it’s sad to say, but makes sense in a site where a very small fraction of people will be resettled [like in many camps]. But students overwhelmingly do see this program as a pathway to resettlement and might hope for us to better address that need.
Here you have to take both a different view of community, in a temporal sense but also the spatial sense. So this is online education, right? And communities, now, they transcend borders, and we have students, Somali students, Sudanese students, who want to go back home. And even if they go to Canada, or Australia, or America, they don’t really want to stay there. I mean, many probably come with that idea and they will, but you probably have interviewed a few students actually, who have such a passionate drive to go back and do work in the place that they are originally from. And is that community? I think that, in a definition, it is.
I mean, one of the other things that is right there in Ignatian pedagogy is the definition of community is for the learner to decide—not for us to decide.
And so does, at some point, the ethos of building community at the center then also translate into preparing these students for resettlement?
In some ways, yeah. [Although,] I mean, formally, no. But I think that really, especially the diploma program, yes. One of the things that happens is that the diploma students, they have academic credentials. So they can apply to scholarships, etc. [World University Service Canada {WUSC}] knows us, for example. They know that we’re good. And that’s very clear, something that’s very easy to see.
Something that’s harder to see, harder to measure, is the impact of our program on other pathways to resettlement. And I personally believe there is. But I’ll be honest: it’s speculation in a lot of ways. Part of it is that the refugee status determination officer at UNHCR is looking for something, and it’s calibrated to a Western mindset—to a certain cultural structure, where you’re supposed to come and you’re supposed to dispassionately relay all the awful things that have brought you to this place, and it should be clinical, and it should be exact. So you have more than one interview, and you should say exactly the same things and have the exact same dates. Everything has to be packaged properly and identically. In any interaction that you have with the UNHCR or a foreign government or anything like that. And that is something that we do kind of teach. I mean, we have a course on intercultural communication, which I think is huge. We teach people to write reports that get them grades in American universities.
And so I think that through all of this—what I would say is that when people sit in that UNHCR office, or the Canadian embassy office, they know better how to give the people what they’re looking for. And I’m sure you’ve seen this in your interviews: people learn to joke in English, and be funny in English, and be likable in English! There are things that are funny and fun in Arabic that aren’t funny and fun in English, and people learn about that stuff! I mean there’s a lot more to it than learning a language, right? The whole cultural immersion that we offer is—
So you do see a positive impact of the program on students’ chances at resettlement?
I think [with non-traditional, scholarship resettlement], it’s a direct link that you can see very easily. You know, I can find quotes and information that would prove that. Whereas with this other thing, the influence of the program on formal or traditional pathways of resettlement, it’s harder to empirically prove.
We know we have a 50 percent resettlement rate. Which, when you compare to the 0.1 percent that everyone else gets, is statistically off the charts! A large part of that is WUSC. [But] the question for me is, okay, how many of our students, firstly, are [already] so far along with the resettlement process that we don’t really have any impact on that? And secondly, are we artificially selecting students who are succeeding? Are we making their outcomes better, or are we just looking for the same things in our admissions interviews that are what [resettlement officers] are looking for, and of course that would make our stats way higher?
And again, probably the majority of it is scholarships, and so I still stand behind the fact that this is a really good way to get out of the country. And I think a lot of the Sudanese students, especially, who have no resettlement options—I mean, that’s why they kill themselves to do this work, right? It's because they see it as a way out. I mean, we have students [who] work 12 hour days, and then come to the center for three hours, and then go home and study and sleep for a couple hours, and then get up to do it again. That drive comes from the desire to escape, not because they want to learn about stoichiometry.
I’m interested in this challenge—implementing a program which is developed, designed off-site, internationally, in a very different context, and then reconciling that design with what the students want from the program and that you would like to gear it towards.
The endless struggle with any NGO is communicating the desires of the students up and then reconciling that with the desires of the donors and the people who design the programming, make the decisions. JRS is really concerned about the fact that JC:HEM, that those diploma credits, aren’t recognized in Jordan. The students, some students care, but clearly enough students don’t care about accreditation in Jordan that we can fill the program. So why is it that this pressure is coming from above? Why worry about accreditation in Jordan if none of the students can afford to do their last year of university at [the University of Jordan] and get their bachelor’s degree? And if they could—say we offered scholarships, paid their tuition—it would be way more expensive to run, and still they couldn’t get a work permit! So what’s the point? Well, it’s the soft skills, right? The value of this is not what—it’s not graduation, it’s not accreditation—it’s what are the students here saying: we joined this program, we love this program, for these other reasons, you know what I mean? And there’s a huge disconnect there.
What would be some ideal improvements or improvements that are in the works?
For JRS Higher Ed? Again, [bringing learning] closer to communities. It’s interesting what you say about the students liking the central spot, too.
But part of that is just space. [Currently there’s] not enough space to even begin to approach serving the demand. We never will be able to, of course. But there’s no reason that the program could not be significantly larger, except that the space is small. And also, the idea for this year has always been to divert funding away from transportation and towards rent and salaries. So more students served for the same amount of money. That hasn’t really happened, but that’s the goal.
I also really would like to expand the informal programming. I guess I kind of see it as a pyramid: the CSLT classes, well, they’re a preparation for the diploma, and there’s many more CSLT students than there will ever be diploma students. And again, the diploma students are looking at this as a way out. And to me, you know, one of our core mandates is hope, right? And being able to see this path of CSLT to diploma, diploma to escape—that you can be in CSLT and get value from someone else getting resettled. I mean obviously there’s frustrations and emotional ups and downs, but that idea that, yes, you can see a path towards an intervention that you are actually actively pursuing, instead of just sitting around and waiting.
And as an extension of that, these informal programs could be a much larger base of that pyramid. You can serve a lot more people for cheap. And again, it’s not all about the money, but at some level it’s a part of it, you have to think about how can we reach the most people. And, again, we will never reach enough, so if we can implement a program for a small amount of money that will help people see this path to something better, then I think that’s something we have to pursue.
I would really like to start implementing programs, or these [informal] classes specifically, in the style of Ashrafieh. So finding potential foreign volunteers who are willing to work for nothing, basically. And go into different communities and bring the resources and the value.
In your view, what’s the importance of higher education for refugees when they can’t work?
I think we’ve talked about that. One of them is filling your time. Higher education, any education, is something you can take with you. And there is a lot of emphasis in NGOs, the aid agencies, on education up to 18 years old, but what happens when you turn 18? The Iraqis put it into perspective very well, that education is not seen as something in Iraq that stops when you’re 18. And then, "Sorry, well, you’re a refugee now. Forget your plans to pursue something bigger…?"
But yeah, I think one of them is filling time. Another is soft skills. I mean learning things that make your life better no matter what you do, whether that’s computer skills, English skills, communication skills. A lot of it [is] we bridge the line between learning center and community center. You know, it’s a place where people come to feel good about themselves. And that’s huge.
And for some students—[we had a student who] really struggled when she finished [the diploma program], because most of our graduates had found stuff to do with their time, and she didn’t. And to be part of this community for three years and then one day you’re just like, "Okay, done, bye! Now you’re back at home." That was really difficult for her. That’s something that we will have to confront more and more.
Especially when they don’t get resettled.
Yeah. And, well, you know the heartening thing about it is, I think, of that first cohort, [she] is the only one that is in that position. Or at least the only one that has really identified herself to us. So others do have informal work and, as I say, it does tend to be better than [smoking shisha] or working in a factory or something.
Because of the diploma?
Again, you know, is it because of the diploma, or is it because of skills they had before, or what? It’s hard to say. But, there’s definitely correlation, yeah.
What’s your greatest motivation for working here?
Oh gosh, the students! Really, it’s the students. And trying to connect the students with things that they want and need. [And ultimately, it’s not the institutional expectations that come first, but] what matters is [the students], that’s the motivation. And to be honest, getting people out. Maybe it’s different in other sites, but here, especially for the Sudanese—like I say, something bad will happen [within the three years of studying here in Jordan]. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. And that’s hard to confront. But it’s an inevitability.
What does social justice mean to you? And how does it play out at the center?
Why I like JRS is that they have this set of core values. Compassion, hope, dignity, solidarity, hospitality, justice, and participation are the values of JRS. And to me, I think social justice is really about just treating people like people, in a lot of ways. And recognizing that they have goals and hopes and dreams, the same as you. And you might be in a different position, maybe less able to act on those things, but that people aren’t “different.” The refugee isn’t “different,” you know what I mean? It’s just a different setting.
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