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Mentors for new shores
I’ ve learnt not to give up, and if one door closes, to look for another one and keep trying...
Muhammad and his mentee at Evans High School
LEAP program allows students familiar with the refugee experience to help make the path a little easier for those now coming through.
Ruth Tregale interviewed by James Wells
Macquarie University’ s Learning, Education Aspiration, Participation program was recently awarded the New South Wales Humanitarian Award in the education category. LEAP provides mentors for students who were refugees or whose parents were refugees. These mentors are Macquarie students and they advise their mentees on study skills and pathways into tertiary education.
LEAP project co-ordinator Ruth Tregale sits down with Campus Review to discuss the program’ s genesis, its goals and the impact it’ s having on mentors and mentees.
CR: Can you tell us a bit about the LEAP program?
RT: LEAP encompasses a range of programs. They’ re all about increasing participation in higher education by students who are traditionally under-represented, from disadvantaged backgrounds. The LEAP Macquarie Mentoring Program specifically targets students from refugee backgrounds, humanitarian entrance backgrounds. We’ re working with students in high schools. Basically, the program takes students from Macquarie University, who may themselves have come from refugee backgrounds, into high schools to work with students in years 9 through 11, with the aim of improving their educational outcomes.
Why is the Macquarie program specifically targeted towards those from refugee backgrounds? The program started when one of our students here at Macquarie [ told me ] his story. He was from Sierra Leone and he was so inspired by one particular teacher in his high school to stick with
his education, to carry on, and to enter further education, when basically everyone else in the school was saying:‘ This guy is a refugee, he won’ t have many options.’
Because of this one teacher, this student, Muhammad, came through, did extremely well, had the highest marks for English in his whole year, and came to Macquarie.
I was just talking with him one day and he said he would love to be able to give back to that community and inspire others the same way this particular teacher had inspired him. We partnered with the New South Wales Department of Education and spent about six months talking to everybody involved, from teachers in the schools, to school students, to university students, to find out what would work, what was needed. That’ s why we decided to focus on students from humanitarian entrance backgrounds in particular. I was one of the facilitators who then worked with many of our students who came from a variety of backgrounds.
We also believe, from a business point of view, this is a cohort worth investing in. These students often come from highly motivated, academic-minded families. They have high aspirations and work extremely hard. They just need a bit of extra help to fill the gaps in social and cultural capital to navigate all of those pathways through to higher education.
Was Muhammad from a non-English speaking background? Yes, originally. He was from Sierra Leone. He learnt English while at school and, through his determination, did so well. He finished his degree here at Macquarie University and went on to do a master’ s at Sydney University. He’ s now working for ANZ Bank.
What, specifically, does the mentoring involve? We [ typically ] work with about 10 schools in Western and Greater Western Sydney. At the moment, we’ re working with seven this semester, due to conflicts in timetabling. We start by recruiting students from Macquarie University. They volunteer for this project. We are always completely over-subscribed with students wanting to take part in the program. It’ s quite a rigorous selection process. It’ s important that students have some firsthand knowledge of the
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