Photo: UNHCR
“I wanted to study medicine, but for people like me, who are not Israeli citizens, there is no option to study medicine, nursing, or anything else that requires official training. It is impossible,” says Daniel*, 19, who came to Israel with her family from Sudan when she was only three years old.
“I looked at my options outside Medical School – I wanted to study something challenging, and that’s how I ended up enrolling in electrical and computer engineering degree.” Today, Daniel is finishing her first year at Tel Aviv University. Entering academia is only the first door she opened while many other doors remain closed.
About 8,000 children of refugees and asylum seekers currently live in Israel, most of whom arrived here with their parents more than a decade ago, some arrived alone, without their parents. They grew up and were educated here, in Israeli schools, and built their identity as a mosaic of distant memories from home, the family here and the Israeli daily life. The complexity of this mosaic and the question of identity surfaces towards the end of high school. While Israeli youth, naturally, upon graduation from high school continue seamlessly to the path of military service or a year of “national service”, studies and then work. For the children of asylum seekers and refugees, this continuity is interrupted, with no available routes forward.
The African Students Organization in Israel (ASO) was founded in 2017 with the goal of helping this precise demographic, the African refugee youths. ASO act to empower through academic and vocational training for students in the African refugee community, most of whom do not have scholarships or alternative funding sources. Currently, there are 42 participating students, 23 male and 19 female; out of which two are M.A graduates, six B.A graduates, and 15 undergraduates, and others are in various vocational training and preparatory courses.
In recent years, solutions have sprouted aiming to answer the issue of opening opportunities for young adolescents who see themselves as Israelis and are interested in contributing to the host country and the community from which they came. Each year, the number of high school graduates with matriculation certificates grow steadily. Some dream of integrating into national service and others wish to pursue higher education. Some prefer work and vocational training as well as certificate studies, which are part of the various directions that young adults explore.
When Deborah Geresadik, 18, who came to Israel from Eritrea with her family more than a decade ago, was accepted to study at Ben-Gurion University, there was a “small technical error in the university’s registration” that barred her from being eligible for staying at the dormitory. As a result, she had to travel five days a week from Tel Aviv to Beersheba and back. “I don’t have the ability to enjoy the whole “student experience” like sitting in the library or with a study group at the end of the day because I have a two-hour commute home. There were even exams I got into 30-min late because of transporation issues.”
Deborah and Daniel are two young women who pave the way in uncharted territory. They share some of their challenges, and the way they dealt with them:
“It’s very difficult. There are no scholarships for our target audience, and there are organizations that help, but mainly for students accepted to colleges, not universities. “
Daniel worked during high school to finance her first year at Tel Aviv University, but she still does not know how she will secure funding for the next school year. “You have to think about paying school, living expenses, when you study there is no time to work, and when you work there is less time to study. “
“In the Engineering School people are not very used to seeing dark-skinned people, and they’re not used to seeing women at all, and to be both…, and then when they find out what my background [is, the daughter of asylum seekers], they are shocked.”
But the financial hardship is not the only challenge. She shares the experience of alienation and lack of diversity in the halls of the academia: “In the Engineering School people are not very used to seeing dark-skinned people, and not used to seeing women at all, and to be both…. And then when they find out what my background is, they are shocked.” She shares the attitude of her peers, as well as the professors, who slowly discovered her talent and drew the attention of the rest of the class to her.
Deborah Geresadik / photo credit: Deborah Geresadik
Deborah, an undergraduate student at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, speaks of similar sentiment. “Going to study with my status is not easy. Lots of questions about my identity, ‘Why are you here? Why is this your status? What does that mean?’ It’s not that they don’t want you there, they just don’t have the tools to deal with you.”
Daniel and her family traveled from Sudan through Egypt to Israel, initially living in Tel Aviv, and a decade ago, moved to Rehovot with her parents and three younger siblings. “Learning when you don’t have the resources to do all that, without people you know, to open your door, to be the first to do it in engineering, it’s not easy.”
“I don’t have time to waste, I won’t give up the possibility of self-actualization.”
Despite all this, Daniel continues to focus on her path, but as her second-year approaches, her classmates begin applying for job internships, where things are still unresolved for her and the other student refugees. “I started looking at job opportunities towards the end of last year. Most of the students in my class, have a spot reserved for them already. I’m not doing well so far, I don’t have the connections with people for networking, usually, when an employer sees my status in Israel, they automatically reject the application.”
But despite all this, she doesn’t give up: “I don’t have time to waste, I won’t give up the possibility of self-fulfillment.”
Setting aside the economic, social, bureaucratic, and legal difficulties, the question that is at the heart of the struggle of many young adults like Daniel, who have lived in Israel more years than they have in their homeland, is the question of identity. “The biggest challenge is finding balance and understanding where I am and who I am. ”
The same question is what led Deborah to enroll in sociology, anthropology and African studies at Ben-Gurion University. “I thought that learning about history and culture, would help me deal with the question of identity that concerns a lot of people, a lot of friends around me – to understand the part of culture within the question, ‘Who am I?'”
For Deborah, the issue of identity hits close to home as well. One of her three current jobs is ghost-writing. She documents in prose or poetry the stories of her community, most of them stories of the journey from Eritrea to Israel. She has not yet written the story of her own journey, when she was six or seven, however she shares a few anecdotes from the tale she will one day pen. Deborah’s story is interwoven with innocent memories, ones you might mistake for a family road-trip to the desert. “We’d make up games along the way, play five-gems for example, and because I was little, somebody would often pick me up and carry me parts of the way.”
Even if she does not dwell on the difficulty, it is present in her experience, in her own way. For example, she touches for a moment on a picture that was etched in the memory of that 7-year-old girl: a bloody face covered with flies on the Egyptian border, while they waited “to be paid for so we could pass.” Immediately her tone shifts to lighthearted anecdote: “At Holot (detention center) we were given Mazza-bread, apparently it was Passover, and I didn’t understand the concept of it, there was also hummus, kebabs and sausages, which I never saw before and didn’t eat it, I gave it to someone else.”
“I’ve seen difficult things in my life, so even if it’s hard for me in school or I’m having difficult situations, I won’t get stuck on it, because still, it’s much easier than things I’ve already been through. I was a runner, so it’s like running, you see the finish line and no matter what, you run there.”
For Deborah, integrating into Israel through studies at the Bialik-Rogozin School, a short career as a runner and a supportive and rooted family, gives her the backing and resilience to continue striving high.
“After I finish my bachelor’s degree, I want to do a degree in engineering and computers, I love languages, and programming is also a language, but I don’t have the answer yet for what I want to do in life.”
“I wish that attending university will not be considered such an achievement for my community,” says Deborah, “You don’t have to be a genius to go to school, anyone can do it, people need to progress. ”
“I’ve seen difficult things in life, so even if it’s hard for me in school or I’m having difficult situations, I won’t get stuck on it, because still, it’s much easier than things I’ve already been through. I was a runner, so it’s like running, you see the finish line and no matter what you run there.”
“We are assisting in the education and empowerment of African youth in Israel and in creating a new leadership for this generation” says Alhaji Fofana, ASO’s Co-founder and CEO. “One of our greater challenges, is securing funding and support to be able to expand our scholarships program and diversify our sources of assistance for the African Asylum seeker students in Israel who have been in Israel for over 15 years”.
*Name changed for protection reasons
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