Global Learning Communities: Bridging Borders and Building Capacity of Communities on the Margins

This chapter describes an online certificate program offered to refugees who are in refugee camps and other populations living on the margins. The program was created in partnership with diverse stakeholders to reflect the need for pathways to higher education for refugees who have few, if any, opportunities to participate in higher education. The authors briefly discuss the gaps in services in refugee camps that informed and inspired the creation of an online program that focuses on social work skills. Next, the authors provide a background and description of a multi-player partnership that was needed to create the pathway for refugees to attain higher education credentials in an accredited US institution and share findings from instructor and program feedback instruments, as well as focus groups, that speak to elements of the program, both in design and in implementation. The chapter concludes with a recommendation, for what can be implemented in online social work education as to enhance student experience and create possibilities of sharing varied values and respect across differences, as well as common language of social justice and transformation.