The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Human Services Leadership Program hosted the fifth-annual Community Collaboration for 53 individuals from the campus area and local nonprofit agencies.
This year’s professional development workshop centered on a refugee simulation. Participants were grouped into refugee families and led through a guided exercise of 12 to 14 stations, giving participants a powerful glimpse into what many refugees endure when fleeing their homes and living in refugee camps.
Human services leadership professor Michael Fonkem said that as long as there have been wars, persecution, discrimination and intolerance, there have been refugees. Fonkem has conducted this simulation for students and staff at other area high schools but it is the first time it has been offered on campus.
“It was very important for us to bring the simulation to UW Oshkosh and invite community members to build their cultural competence and find ways to understand refugee and immigrant populations. If we break through our conditioned response of what we think we know, we create a space for a shared understanding of the values, beliefs and behaviors of others,” Fonkem said.
The roughly two-hour experience cultivated global awareness and compassion through the practice of empathy and perspective-taking of Syrian refugees. Successful participation required learners to role-play a reality that is very different from their daily lives. A roll of the dice simulated the uncertainty that refugees face as they traverse challenges of bureaucracy, poverty and trauma with their success often determined by the hands of others. Most participants in the simulation never made it to the United States but instead got stuck in refugee camps for years or died along the way.
Fonkem said it is important to remember that every refugee, every immigrant has a story and often their plight isn’t over once they reach an asylum country.
“If a refugee makes it to their ultimate destination, they still have a whole different set of hurdles. They may not know the language, are no longer qualified to do a job that they had trained to do in their home country and are considered a burden instead of a fellow global citizen,” Fonkem said.
Afterwards, participants have time to reflect as a group about the experience. Participants left with tangible ways to help engage, support and empathize with refugees as they become integrated into local communities and campus.
International studies alumnus Shawn Phetteplace ’08, of Neenah, said he believes our country could do more to help the number of refugees who become displaced and flee to our country.
“This experience brought to the light the long and arduous process people take (with a very small chance) of making it to a final destination country. To risking life and limb to do it, not by choice but out of necessity. I greatly admire what other countries like Germany have done for their refugees, I hope we can someday do the same,” Phetteplace said.
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