Jesuit Schools Earn ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’ Global Citizenship Badges

Por Karina Zapata-Roche
Ago 16th, 2018

We are delighted to award the first three Walk a Mile badges to the schools that have implemented the Global Action Project, Walk a Mile in My Shoes.

This powerful simulation project aims to provide students with an opportunity to pause and experience, if only vicariously, and for a few moments, the frustrations, disappointments and hopes that refugees around the world face. The simulation is carried out in the schools where students experience what it might be like to arrive and live in a refugee camp: crossing borders to get there, receiving food and water allocations, identifying the educational opportunities available and looking for access to medical care, among other things.  

Earlier this summer, Jesuit High School Portland in Oregon in the U.S. hosted its second Walk a Mile in My Shoes refugee camp simulation, hoping to make this an annual project. One of the students shared her reflection,

After participating in the refugee simulation my junior year, I realized that I could go beyond what I thought was possible as a high school student. I learned that as students, we could help emphasize the reality of living as a refugee.”

Sacred Heart Secondary School and St. George’s Catholic Primary School, both located in Banket in Zimbabwe each shared a powerful video of students carrying out the Walk a Mile simulation project, experiencing the heartbreak and difficulty of being forced to leave your home and the frustrations of arriving in a Refugee Camp and trying to find your way around.  

We look forward to more Jesuit schools from our Global Community implementing this project in their schools and helping to raise awareness in our school communities of the difficult situation millions of people find themselves in.

For more details on this project and the toolkit to implement it in your school click here.

If you do implement this project with your students, please be sure to share your experiences of it with the Global Community through a blog article or a video.

Today, more than 65 million people are displaced around the world, the most since World War II. While it is impossible to fully comprehend what it is like to be forced from your home and live as a refugee, Educate Magis, on behalf of Jesuit Refugee Service USA, invites and encourages all schools from our global community to host a Walk a Mile in My Shoes simulation.