Polly Akhurst

I ended up doing all three, and would later go on to lead “Environmental Action and Poetry Society. Meanwhile, community service taught me that I could make an impact - even if it was only on one person. UWC offered an opportunity for us as students to take responsibility and exercise leadership in a broad and non-hierarchical sense, and to teach and learn from our peers.”

Polly’s experiences of activities at UWC were the building blocks for developing a sense of agency and responsibility, and a commitment to make positive change in the world. At university, she became involved with Student Hubs, a network to encourage students to engage in social action. She was involved in various initiatives - one of which was organising a conference on social entrepreneurship and went on to co-found ‘Talk to me’, which was an initiative to encourage strangers to talk to each other. At university, she met alumni of other UWCs and realised the connection and common values shared across the UWC community. It was this same interest that led her to UWC after graduating, and a short spell working in PR and communications.

In 2013, she joined UWC International to work in the area of alumni and community engagement, with the aim of enabling the UWC community to connect and engage with each other in pursuit of the UWC mission. This involved working with many people across UWC to develop and introduce initiatives such as UWC Day, UWCx and the UWC Hub. It was also during this period that she became increasingly interested in education, and in particular, the UWC model of education, she explains, “my interactions with so many alumni strengthened my belief and interest in the UWC model of education: education with a social mission to develop ethical young people with the tools and the mindset to make change in the world. I also became curious about different ways in which a UWC education might be accessed - by different groups and in different ways.”

In 2016, Polly and her UWC International colleague Mia organised the first “mini short course” for UWC alumni. It was entitled “How to make change” and took people through a process of designing solutions to both local and global challenges they were interested in. It was a turning point experience, she explains “At the end of the weekend, when everyone was saying goodbye, people started crying. It was a sign that it was such a powerful learning experience. It was then that I knew that I wanted to enable more of these kinds of experiences to happen for different kinds of people.”

In 2016, UWC International launched the UWC Refugee Initiative, with the aim of increasing UWC’s scholarship provision for refugees to 100 students a year. Polly and Mia were both working on the initiative in different capacities. They became aware that for every scholarship granted, there were so many more talented applicants. Knowing the transformational impact that UWC could make on the lives of the young people awarded the scholarships, they started to think - what could be done for those refugees who could not access a UWC education?

She explains, “We did some research and were shocked - we found that only 22% of refugees had the opportunity to access secondary education. We started to think about how we might use our skills and networks to enable these young people to access a high quality education wherever they are in the world, and the idea for Amala was born. Six months later, we left our jobs. People said we were brave -- we had no funding at the time - but to us it was a no-brainer. It felt like a natural way to contribute to solving a problem where we could use our skills and our extensive network within international and values-based education.”

Shortly after forming the idea for Amala, which is inspired by the Arabic word for both 'hope' and 'bird', and which reflects the hope and opportunity that the education provides, a chance trip led to a meeting with Stuart MacAlpine, UWC South East Asia’s (UWCSEA) Director of Teaching and Learning, and led to Stuart becoming Amala's Director of Education. That conversation would eventually lead to UWCSEA becoming Amala’s educational partner.

UWCSEA have committed their expertise in curriculum development to enable the development of Amala's curriculum.

With the support of 140 educators and refugee youth from within and outside of the UWC movement, Amala has co-constructed over 1000 hours of curriculum which forms the Amala Diploma Programme. It is the first high school diploma created with and for refugee learners around the world. Amala also enables young people to study for short courses in areas such as “Peace-building”, “Social Entrepreneurship” and “English for Changemakers” which have been studied by 250 youth globally.

Amala works with local partners who already have some presence on the ground to enable young people to access the courses. The curriculum is designed so it can be delivered by virtually anyone: Amala trains facilitators from the local organisations to deliver the curriculum. The model combines studying in person with the support of a facilitator and online study, as Polly explains “We use a blended learning model, which makes our learning more flexible than other programmes - students study for six hours a week together in class and four hours per week online. This model also enables us to leverage resources that already exist: it’s not so well known but most refugees have access to mobile phones. We use an online platform which means that the courses can be delivered to their phones in a format that can be easily accessed.”

“At the core of Amala is the idea of agency - of learners being able to make decisions and shape their lives. This is something that we hold dear to us - it’s about using the agency that we developed during our time at UWC and we want to give others the opportunity to develop this same sense of agency too. We see this sense of agency in our alumni - like Mofti, who having taken our Social Entrepreneurship course, has gone on to set up a kiosk in his community to support his two brothers - or Zamzam, who is using her skills in peace-building to lead a group of women to mediate issues in the community.

"The world desperately needs creative innovators, ethical leaders and values driven problem-solvers. We want the young people we work with to be these people.”

Amala also wants to make an impact in the world of education, “There are so many people talking about 21st century learning - but very few people are doing it. As we have approached Amala from a human-centred lens, we are asking questions - what are the best ways for students to evidence their learning, and how can we enable them to access learning that enables them to make a difference in the present, as well as in the future. We hope that our model will inspire others to adopt similar brave, but much needed models around the world. It goes without saying that the model is hugely inspired by UWC.”

Polly explains the impact that UWC has had on Amala and on her own life:

"We wouldn't have had the idea in the first place, nor would we have been able to execute it without all of the support and expertise we have recieved from the UWC community. It just wouldn't exist!"

“In Amala we strongly believe in the Margaret Mead saying, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.’ The only way to create this group of people is through education. I am tremendously grateful to UWC for providing me with my passion for education, the ability to take action and the desire to impact the lives of others, which has enabled me to support the educational development of others. 2020 will be a landmark year for us and represents a moment of transition and growth. During the year, we will embark on a new stage of our journey with the launch of our High School Diploma Programme in Jordan and Kenya."