School/Directorate: Cardiff School of Sport and Health Sciences
Key theme: Links directly to support the University's Sanctuary status; Support the Global element of the Cardiff Met EDGE developing students as global citizens.
Impact and Achievements:
Ten Cardiff based refugees and asylum seekers were hosted for a two-day Psychology summer school. The event provided a taste of studying Psychology at a Higher Education Institution. Home students were also invited to participate in the taster session as Global Buddies to support the participants.
The taster workshop included sessions such as Introduction to Psychology at CMET, the psychology of being bilingual, the psychology of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, and mindfulness.
Quotes from the students who supported the event, and the attendees, show the impact the workshop session had on them:
"It was a great opportunity to learn about the cross-cultural differences that exist in psychology and healthcare - and hearing from the learners was a really eye-opening experience. It was nice for us to speak about our experiences in psychology and in turn, learn from others" (MSc Health Psychology Student volunteer).
"It was a pleasure and an honour to meet and spend time with such lovely people who have faced, and still face, great adversity and yet continue to move forward in life. Personally, it was a rewarding experience to make a connection, have dialogue with and learn from people from other cultures and to also feel that I was contributing to something positive in other people's lives" (BSc Psychology Student volunteer).
Quotes from attendees:
"I would like to thank you on behalf of all our team members! These two days were the best days since we're moved to Cardiff. We learned much and will be sharing with our community."
"Felt important."
The project will also have long-term impact as, due to the success of the event supported by the Global Grant, the project team has been successful in securing Get Started funding to run an accredited 8-week Psychology course for outreach students who are asylum seekers and refugees in 2022/23. The achievements of the project were disseminated via an article on InSite highlighting the summer school as part of a national refugee awareness week Novel Summer School provides a taster of HE for Cardiff based asylum seekers and refugees (sharepoint.com). In addition, in June 2022 a reporter from the BBC contacted the project team as they wish to broadcast a news item relating to the activity and the subsequent Get Started funding that has been awarded (July to September 2022).