Albert Einstein German Academic Refugee Initiative (DAFI)
Some 2,000 young refugees are currently completing a higher education with the help of the DAFI scholarship programme funded by the Federal Foreign Office.
Kave Bulambo was 17 years old when she fled from Congo because of the civil war. For nearly two years she lived in refugee camps in Tanzania and Mozambique before finally receiving asylum in South Africa. “All I owned when I arrived at the station in Durban at 4 o’clock in the morning were the few things I could carry.” Kave Bulambo had been about to take her final school exams in Congo. Everything in South Africa was alien to her at first – the life, the language, the lessons. But the young woman learned fast, finished high school with distinction – and heard about DAFI, the Albert Einstein German Academic Refugee Initiative. “It changed my life.”
When the Federal Government founded the initiative in 1992, it was named after the famous physicist, because he shared the experience of flight and foreignness with the young people that DAFI supports. When the National Socialists took power in 1933, Einstein went into exile in the USA, where he lived until his death in 1955. What differentiates him from people like Kave Bulambo is his access to education. Unlike Einstein, who entered the USA as an established scientist and Nobel Prize winner and was soon able to do research at Princeton University, many refugees do not even have the chance to enter higher education.
“Education has made me stronger”
This is the reason for the initiative, which is financed by the Federal Foreign Office and implemented by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). It has already enabled some 6,000 talented young men and women to complete their studies, and there are currently roughly 2,000 scholarship holders in 40 countries. As a rule, they visit a higher education institution where they have found refuge. Afterwards many of them return to their countries of origin to use their newly acquired knowledge – for example, in medicine, business or engineering – to help in the work of reconstruction. Most of them come from Afghanistan, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan – or Congo, like Kave Bulambo.
She successfully studied psychology in South Africa and began working for local aid organisations. “During that time I recognised that my life is an almost unattainable dream for most female refugees,” says the 29-year-old, who has meanwhile founded an organisation herself to support female refugees in acquiring education and skills. Kave Bulambo has now been selected for an additional scholarship in Germany, where she will begin a Master programme in public policy and good governance. “Education has made me better and stronger and helped me to overcome one of the most difficult challenges in the world.”
World Refugee Day on 20 June
