“Education Changes the World”: The World University Service of Canada’s Student Refugee Program

Abstract

This paper reflects on the origins and development of the Student Refugee Program of the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and its significance as a “transformational” force in the lives of individuals and communities. The WUSC Student Refugee Program is a unique effort involving students, faculty and staff at universities and colleges across Canada who work together to mobilize material and human resources in order to enable student refugees to resettle and complete their post-secondary studies in Canada. The author, who has worked closely with the Student Refugee Program at the University of British Columbia since the mid-1990s, first describes the operation of the Student Refugee Program, and then considers its significance in relation to issues of resettlement, gender equality, “brain drain” and transnationalism.

A Meso-Level Analysis of the Revitalization of the WUSC Student Refugee Program at St. Francis Xavier University

“…When the PSRP launched, WUSC leveraged its local (campus), national, and overseas programs and relationships to create the WUSC SRP (Peterson, 2010). Once approved as a SAH in 1978, WUSC began inviting its LCs across the country to join the SRP (i.e., to become a CG).…”

“…WUSC hosts national and regional SRP conferences to facilitate training, connectivity, and information sharing among LC volunteers and SRP students (McKee et al, 2019;Plasterer, 2010). For post-secondary students facilitating SRP resettlement in Canada, the program provides opportunities for youth civic engagement (McKee et al, 2019) and transformational adult learning (Peterson, 2010;Plasterer, 2010).…”

Refugees and Higher Education

“…After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 thousands of students from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos sought refuge mainly in the USA but also in Canada, Australia, France and elsewhere, as part of wider population movements from South-East Asia (Nguyen-Hong-Nhiem and Halpern, 1989). One response to this new crisis was the establishment in 1978 by WUS Canada of a new Student Refugee Program, which had awarded 1,000 scholarships for study in Canada by 2008 (Peterson, 2010).…”

Introduction: Special Issue on Private Sponsorship in Canada

“…6 There was also limited literature on the World University Service of Canada's (WUSC) Student Refugee Program (srp). 7 Despite these important efforts, there was no comprehensive systematic account and evaluation of Canada's private sponsorship system. 8 To partially redress this gap, a special issue of Refuge 9 focused on the historical establishment of private sponsorship in response to Indochinese refugees.…”