While many students are busy congratulating themselves on their fading bronze tans and the pennies earned from long hours working at the local ice cream store, three University students can recount far different stories. Instead of donning swimsuits and heading for the beach, they undertook the formidable challenge of working in refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia as part of the Summer Opportunities in Leadership1s Refugee Action Project.
3I went because I was looking for perspective on my own life and future,2 said engineering senior Ram Jagannath, who spent the summer living and working in a refugee camp outside Croatia. 3I felt like the components of my education had been confined to the traditional and was looking for an experience that would be unique and formative.2
Jagannath, along with Amy Hepburn, Trinity 197 and Trinity junior Aaron Miller, spent nine weeks working with approximately 200 Bosnian refugees on Obonjan Island, located off the coast of Croatia. The refugees had lost their homes when violence broke out in western Bosnia in the early 1990s.
As volunteers with the American Refugee Committee, Jagannath, Miller and Hepburn had the opportunity to apply leadership concepts they learned in the classroom to real world situations, said Bob Korstad, program director of the Hart Leadership Program, which oversees the Refugee Action Project.
3It1s a chance for students to learn about the plight of people in refugee situations and about their own capacity to make a difference, even in difficult circumstances,2 he said.
At the refugee camp, the students drew from their own leadership abilities to determine how best to take the refugees1 minds off their plight and the state of their cramped, desolate quarters. They taught English classes and organized social work programs, including a kindergarten for the children and sports tournaments for adults.
3We spent a lot of time just visiting people in their one-room Ohomes1 in the camp, talking to them about their experiences,2 Jagannath said. 3They had very few material goods because they had been stripped of their material possessions, but they took us into their community and offered us their trust, respect and love.2
The RAP Program is one component of the Hart Leadership Program that aims to teach students not only about leadership, but also about their own ethical responsibility to the world in which they live, explained Maurice Blanco, Trinity 197, a former student and participant in the program who served as the 1997 Summer Opportunities in Leadership Program Coordinator.
3I think the program is tremendous because it gives students the opportunity to do hands-on work with leaders in the non-profit sector and business world,2 said Blanco. 3It allows students to integrate leadership experience with academic work and completes the full goal of service learning.2
Miller added that the program enabled him to learn more about himself while he was applying the ideas he learned in his classes.
3I gained an appreciation for the horrible and lasting effects that war can cause on individuals. Hearing the stories of how [the refugees1] loved ones had been killed, their homes destroyed and their sense of powerlessness was heartbreaking,2 said Miller. 3I learned how... we as humans deal with pain and hardshipDhow some of us overcome itDand how it shapes the rest of our lives and ultimately the generations that follow us.2
Before spending the summer working with refugees, participants in RAP participate for one semester in a house course to prepare for the experience. The class includes lessons in the Serbo-Croatian language and the history of the region, including the origins of the Bosnian conflict and the role the U.S. government played in handling the situation. But even with the extra instruction, Jagannath said, it was impossible for the students to anticipate fully what the experience would entail until they arrived at the refugee camp.
3We can1t even imagine a war on our own soil,2 he said. 3The situations in the refugee camp were nothing short of traumatic and entirely unbelievable compared to the comforts that Americans take for granted,2 he said.
The experience of living in the refugee camp was one of the most powerful experiences Blanco encountered as well, one that he said has transformed many of his own beliefs and personal goals.
3Working in a refugee camp in Slovenia not only reaffirmed many of the basic values and principles that have always been important to me but also demonstrated the power that one person can have in leadership situations to influence and help people,2 he said.
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