DOCUMENTARY ON REFUGEE EDUCATION DURING AND AFTER THE PANDEMIC SHUTDOWNS

“Agape (Love) is the most beautiful word in Greek”.

This is the title of the 80-minute documentary produced in the context of the National Geographic Society project “Teaching to Hope: Saving the education of refugee teens during and after the pandemic’s school shutdowns”. The project involved teachers trying to integrate unaccompanied minors into public schools in six different host countries: Jordan, Greece, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, and the USA. The documentary was a contribution from the Greek volunteer team at Foster Educators and was part of the 8th Ierapetra International Documentary Festival & Awards (IDFI) which took place in Crete between 7-21 August.

Foster Educators are an innovative group of both active and retired volunteer teachers who assist in the inclusion of refugee children in Greek public schools by providing after-school homework support as well as remedial education lessons during holidays.

The foster educator spends one or two afternoons a week meeting with his/her students, the majority of whom are unaccompanied minors that live in shelters.

The annual International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra has put the fourth largest city of the Greek island of Crete on the map of the most renowned festivals dedicated to the documentary genre around the world, thus creating a unique arts experience with images and sounds from all over the world and attracting a large number of domestic and international film industry professionals, academics, cinema aficionados and general audiences.

You can watch the documentary at https://refugeducare.blogspot.com/2021/08/national-geographic-documentary.html

Matching link to materials on the Living Democracy website:
https://www.living-democracy.com/textbooks/volume-1/part-3/