Jesuit Worldwide Learning: Higher Education at the Margins

Jesuit Worldwide Learning: Higher Education at the Margins (JWL) is a collaborative global partnership comprised of organizations, institutions, companies and, above all, people, to provide tertiary education to those who would otherwise not have access to higher learning opportunities. It draws on the rich and centuries long Jesuit tradition of higher education and through a blended on-site and on-line approach mobilizes the resources of Jesuit and other worldwide networks of educational institutions.

Since 2010, in partnership with Jesuit Refugee Service, professors and Universities around the world, more than 5000 students have studied in JWL programs. In the three-year pilot, JWL (formerly known as JC:HEM) offered the on-line Diploma in Liberal Studies to refugees and host community members in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, Kakuma refugee camp in north-west Kenya, and in the city of Amman, Jordan. By 2014 JWL has enabled refugees and host community members to study different Community Service Learning Tracks, which are certificate courses that serve the needs of the community in local areas such as teacher education, counseling, English as a foreign language, Child Protection, Special Needs, and Community Health Provider. Needs are identified by the students, leaders of the community and the on-site partner. 

Our Vision: provide tertiary learning to people and communities at the very edges of our societies – be it through poverty, location, lack of opportunity, conflict or forced displacement (refugees) – so that they can contribute their knowledge and voices to the global community of learners and together we will foster hope to create a more peaceful and humane world. Learning Together to Transform the World.