Edmonton Journal Article

Originally posted on the Edmonton Journal website: Click here

Student thanks refugee program for life in Canada

Larry Johnsrude
Edmonton Journal

Friday, March 10, 2006

Denis Remo doesn’t know where he would be now if it wasn’t for a little-known program that rescues refugees from disadvantaged parts of the globe and places them in Canadian universities.

Having fled his home in southern Sudan at nine years old, he spent most of his life in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to Edmonton in 2003 to study science at the University of Alberta.

Now 27 years old and in his third year of a science degree, he hopes to work in a medical lab once he’s finished university.

He may go back to his former African home, he says. But only as an educated man capable of improving the lives of others.

"I would want to go back one day when I have something to offer," he says. "I would want to be able to affect some change in the community."

Tall and slender, soft spoken and wearing a T-shirt and jeans, he looks no different from any others in the ethnic mix of international and refugee students on campus.

But it was his own hard work and the assistance of others that brought him to the U of A.

He was sponsored by the World University Service of Canada, which brings between 45 and 50 refugee students to Canadian universities every year and covers their tuition and living expenses.

Despite the program’s success, it is facing new financial pressures as a result of a cut in funding from the federal government’s Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). That has left the program scrambling to raise about $250,000 a year on its own.

The local chapter at the U of A now has to raise an additional $5,000 a year on top of the money it gets from student fees. It is holding a fundraising dinner Monday beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Faculty Club to help raise the money. Former refugee student Pascaline Nseker will speak about her experiences.

Remo, the son of teaching parents from a small farming village in southern Sudan, fled his home in 1990 when it was overtaken by a rebel militia in the country’s ongoing civil war.

He remembers the soldiers coming, the sounds of gunfire and anguished neighbours running from their homes.

"We knew the soldiers were coming and could hear them exchanging fire," he recalls.

To stay would have meant imminent danger or death for his parents. He and his five siblings would likely have been inducted into the military as child soldiers.

"They were rounding up kids of 10 and 11 years old to join the rebels," he says. "They do it by glorifying the gun. You see other kids with guns and they have all the power in the world. You think it’s a cool thing and the right thing to do.

"I was lucky I had parents who said it wasn’t something I should do."

Fleeing on foot, he and his family walked from Sudan to neighbouring Kenya, where they settled in a refugee camp. The camp, a shanty town of 100,000 people, was his home for the next 13 years. He was educated inside the camp by residents helping out as teachers, received more formal education in schools run by the Catholic church and other social agencies outside the camp, and got work in the camp teaching other youngsters.

After turning 18, he set a five-year goal to leave the refugee camp behind and get into university.

His ticket out was the student refugee program. He met with program officials in the camp, underwent the interviews and was accepted on his second try by the University of Alberta, which takes one refugee student every year. He arrived here in September 2003.

"I never gave up," he says.

The student refugee committee at the U of A has sponsored 18 refugees since the program started on campus in 1988. Nationally, the program began in 1978 and has sponsored 850 students. It covers their tuition fees and living expenses. Along with the money it gets from the national body, it raises funds by charging a small percentage on the tuition fees of all U of A students.

Barbara Levine, director of university and college programs for the World University Service of Canada, says the organization was told in 2004 that it would no longer qualify for the CIDA funding.

"We did not meet their program requirements," she says. "It wasn’t anything on their part being unhappy with the program. People understand it’s a great program but we no longer fit their program criteria."

CIDA spokeswoman Lilian Chatterjee says the program never fit into CIDA’s policy guidelines but was being funded due to an administrative oversight that was corrected two years ago.

"While it’s laudable what they do, it does not fit into our overseas development mandate," she says. "Our support is to help refugees in countries overseas, not to bring them to Canada."