The A26 Backpack™: a refugee higher education ecosystem

The Article 26 Backpack™ is a digital-assisted, empowering ecosystem for the safe and effective narration, collation, storage, & evaluation of refugee students’ accomplishments, experiences, and skills as whole people. The Backpack’s™ content can be shared with credential evaluators, higher ed, granting agencies and employers to better access admissions & jobs.

Refugees face real problems as they try to (re)enter higher ed: missing educational data; lack of information about testing, little clarity as to the transferability of other kinds of learning; and difficulties in sharing documents with relevant higher ed officials or scholarship agencies. Where they may possess credentials, they aren't "official" and can be easily dismissed for bureaucratic reasons or because of concerns about their legitimacy due to the wide-circulation of fraudulent documents. But the biggest problem for refugees in this field is explaining who they are as complex people, and who they have continued to become in exile.

The Backpack™ is a product of 5 years of research amongst Syrian refugee students and those tasked to help them.  With support from the Ford Foundation, the prototype Backpack™ will be deployed in Lebanon (4/2018).  Not a “proof of concept,” this implementation is a “pebble tossed in a pond.”  Several hundred refugee students and others will fill their Backpacks,™ our team will connect them to universities, and in showing its utility, understanding its problems and failures, and gaining trust from users on all sides – we will ready it for an organic spread to the Mideast at-large and beyond.

Prior to 2011, nearly 25% of Syrians 18-25 were enrolled in higher education, including roughly equal numbers of men and women. An estimated 20-50,000 such university-qualified students were residing in Turkey in 2014, with similar numbers in Jordan and Lebanon. The UNHCR estimates that a quarter of those refugees from Syria entering Europe in the latest refugee flows are university-eligible young people. The Backpack™ is a tool to empower these young people to connect with educational opportunities, giving them more control over how they and their accomplishments are understood and perceived.

Number of Backpack "accounts" opened through the digital platform; evaluation of user/observer experience through post-use interviews/assessments - Refugee and vulnerable students adopt and "fill" Backpacks

Number of requests for evaluation fulfilled and wait times for evaluation; discussions with evaluators/credential officials on use, design and possible incentive opportunities - Global Credentialing Cloud accesses, evaluates transcripts and other materials

Number of refugee Backpackers are effectively evaluated by universities for admission/end user feedback and focus discussions - Universities access and use the Backpack contents in admissions and support decisions for refugee Backpackers.

What makes the Backpack™ unique is its greatest strength: It helps refugee and displaced young people move beyond a reliance on traditional methods to describe their educational accomplishments. The Backpack™ empowers them to demonstrate who they are as complex people, and who they have continued to become in exile or displacement as they seek to reconnect with higher education or the workforce.  As an ecosystem, it is more than a digital platform, but rather a collaboration of institutions, human-to-human interactions and guidance, and opportunities with the potential to revolutionize student mobility and engagement.

Refugee young people have been part of the innovation and design of the A26BP™ from its inception and will have a continuing and critical role in its assessment, refinement and distribution.  Not only will young people from refugee communities be among the first to use the Backpack™, they will also be trained as guides for those filling the Backpack™. As the Backpack™ continues to grow, that diaspora, communities of refugees and former refugees will take on leadership roles in the leadership, management, and support of the Backpack™.  

Director Watenpaugh & refugee teachers talk about the A26BP™ - Lebanon May 2017

With a commitment from our software provider (iQ4.com) and support from UC Davis, AUB and the Ford Foundation, the Backpack™ is free to all users for at least the next two years.  In the first prototype deployment event, Backpack Guides,™ trained at AUB will host Backpackers from various refugee and diaspora communities in Lebanon at several sites around the country, including informal settlements near the Syrian border.  As the Backpack™ grows, the costs associated with hosting, maintaining, and expanding use are the most critical sustainability issues we are hoping to solve.

We have built a consortium of collaborating institutions, organizations and foundation partners; this forms the first stage of a network that will include institutions and organizations in frontline states.  The consortium will be responsible for assisting the hub institution in the initial development project, and serve crucial functions in facilitating government relations, cooperating in testing and evaluation. We plan to move towards an independent, not-for-profit corporation, with a board of directors including representatives of the various constituencies served.  This board will explore sustainability options including asking universities employers to subscribe to the Backpack™.

Among the most critical hurdles to the A26BP™’s success is identifying and implementing a sustainability plan.  Other questions about success revolve around the acceptance and use of the Backpack™ and contents by its “end users,” especially in societies where higher education is often linked to restrictive policies, human rights abuse and authoritarian governance. In these cases, the need for the Backpack™ is even more acute, but its inherent effectiveness may be strictly limited.

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Of the over 10 million Syrian refugees and IDPs, 100,000s are educated professionals, recent university graduates and young people displaced from their studies. (Re)connecting that population with higher education is a global imperative.  It is a challenge within a challenge that requires sustainable solutions which must bridge higher education, governments, professional organizations, employers and the technology community.  Solve has the capacity to make that bridge and focus thinking on building a sustainable plan to help the Article 26 Backpack™ reach its full potential.

Ford Foundation, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officials,  American University in Beirut, iQ4.com.

We are unaware of competitors.