For the past two months, eight American university students have been living the lives of typical Dubliners: tackling the bus system, drinking Guinness, and picking up conversational phrases like “thanks a mil” and “cheers”. They’ve been out at night in Temple Bar, hiked the cliffs of Howth, and indulged unashamedly in various tourist activities.
But what distinguishes this group from the deluge of international students in the Irish capital is the unique purpose of their visit. These eight students, all attending Duke University in North Carolina, were fully funded through a programme called Duke-Engage to work with various organisations serving the migrant and refugee communities in Dublin.
DukeEngage Dublin, as it is officially known, is a branch of the umbrella DukeEngage programme, a civic engagement initiative begun in 2007 through funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the Duke University Endowment.
Each summer since then, Duke University has funded dozens of international and domestic engagement schemes, allowing both individuals and groups of students to immerse themselves in cities, towns, and geographical areas expressing specific civic needs.
DukeEngage Dublin is unique in that it represents one of just two European DukeEngage projects – the other in Northern Ireland dealing with remediating Protestant-Catholic relations.
The majority of international programmes are based in African, Middle Eastern and South American countries, focusing on issues such as environmental justice, political activism, artistic engagement and medical assistance. The Dublin programme is one of the most urban, which poses different challenges.
“For the past four summers the DukeEngage Dublin programme has been placing talented and motivated university students in migrant-led or migrant-focused organisations for an intensive internship experience,” said programme co-director Bill Tobin. “Students seek first and foremost to understand the values and culture of the organisations in which they work. Then they try to creatively meet the stated and unstated needs of these organisations in a manner that is consistent with these values.”
The Dublin programme has run since DukeEngage’s inception but has changed each year to accommodate the numbers of students, as well as better reflect the changing situation of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in Dublin. Each year, students have been placed in a set of pre-chosen NGOs, but this list fluctuates based on the organisations’ specific needs.
“It’s a very good hybrid between the type of work experiences you’d find in America – like, for example, a traditional American college student policy internship – and what people would imagine as a hands-on NGO experience,” said Bethany Horstmann, a student in the group working at New Communities Partnership. “It’s one of the few placements that has that hybrid: you get to work with community members and professionals at the same time.”
As another part of DukeEngage, the students are required to meet once a week outside of their NGOs to work on two group projects. This year, the group has collaborated with Dublin City Council’s Office for Integration to create a social project called ;Intercultural Dublin’, which involved the students interviewing pedestrians in various locations throughout Dublin about the state of interculturalism in their city.
The group also took on the development of a migrant-focused conference to be held in October in conjunction with Metro Éireann editor Chinedu Onyejelem. The group was responsible for researching two central issues facing migrants in Dublin – policing and access to third-level education – plus interviewing local figures and writing documents reflecting this information with a human-rights perspective.
“We just wanted to get out into the city and get the issues of integration and immigration to the forefront of public consciousness and get conversations started,” said DukeEngage participant Raanah Amjadi, who worked at Dublin City Council.
Overall, the students’ experience in Dublin has presented them with new perspectives that could not have been gained elsewhere.
“I don’t know of any other program that will allow you to enter another country, another culture and fully immerse yourself without the normal preoccupations of funding, finding a place to stay, etc,” said Amjadi. “Being free of these troubles is really when you can engage with the people and experience a new life.”
