Changemaker Courses
Overview
Amala Changemaker Courses address specific areas such as “Peacebuilding”, “Social Entrepreneurship” and “Ethical Leadership”, where youth aged 16-25 can make change in their lives. They are typically run over a ten week period. Changemaker Courses enable students to get back into learning, develop life skills and support students to integrate and contribute to their communities.
Target group
Our Changemaker Courses are designed for:
16-25 year old refugees, internally displaced, asylum seekers, as well as students from the host community
Keen to make change in their own lives and develop life skills
Have an intermediate level of English (see Language section below)
Changemaker Courses
Social entrepreneurship
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course, students explore how to make change in their communities through designing a project that does social good. Students examine and map issues within their communities, and use a design thinking process to generate ideas for social projects, which they prototype and implement.
Check out the course brochure here.
Ethical Leadership
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course, students explore how to create new value for communities through Ethical Leadership. They will explore the idea of leadership as a shared behaviour, and specifically ethical leadership as a means to improve the wellbeing of communities and make change.
Check out the course brochure here.
Peace-building in Your Community
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course, students explore how they can build peace within their communities. Students examine the concepts of self and group identity and how identities can lead to prejudice and discrimination. They then examine barriers to peace before looking at conflict transformation and conflict analysis, which they use to develop a peace-building project.
Check out the course brochure here.
Living Peacefully
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course, students manage complexity by exploring perspectives on what it means to live with inner peace. The unit focuses on emotional literacy as a toolkit to building personal peace and engaging with others. Students explore the relationship between emotional intelligence, identity, choices and personal wellbeing, in order to help us be intentional in our actions and lead more self-aware and peaceful lives.
Check out the course brochure here.
Making Societal Change
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course students will recognise and understand some of the ways in which regional and global institutions, policies and other factors shape local experiences and environments. Students will develop agency to create new value to affect positive change in systems that extend beyond their immediate community, through advocacy and participation in civil society.
Check out the course brochure here.
Economics for Positive Change
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course students will build their agency and ability to be influential in order to make positive change in communities. The module is focused on resource allocation, exploring ideas of choice, scarcity and opportunity. Students will develop their understanding of ways that they can ensure participation and agency within their sphere of influence to promote peace and positive change.
Check out the course brochure here.
Artistic & Cultural Expression
(Available through blended and online only models)
In this course students use the arts as a lens to understand the world around them and express themselves. The course allows students to build their agency in being able to ‘read’ and ‘write’ the arts, and their transformative competencies to manage complexity and create new value.
Check out the course brochure here.
English for Changemakers
(Available through blended model only)
In this course, students will develop a strong grounding in the communication and collaboration skills for change making. The course will start with communicating and collaborating without language and then begin to find and use a common language through English medium.
Check the course brochure here.
How it works
The Changemaker Courses have flexibility at their core and are designed to fit around the daily lives of our students, who will often have family and other commitments.
Delivered in partnership
Amala has its own learning centres but also partners with other like-minded organisations to deliver our short courses. We believe a partnership model has strength in its ability to combine the expertise of local organisations in their communities with Amala’s approaches to curriculum and pedagogy. Find out more about how our partnerships work here.
Facilitator led
Amala courses are designed to be delivered by facilitators, who are trained and given ongoing support by the Amala team. Facilitators usually come from the local community (some are also Amala alumni) and have a deep knowledge of their contexts, enabling them to adapt the curriculum accordingly.
Length and Duration
Each Changemaker Course is designed to last a total of 100 hours, and to be run over a period of ten weeks. The time commitment for students is 10 hours per week, six of which are ‘synchronous’ (together with a facilitator and the class) and four of which are ‘asynchronous’, i.e. independent learning.
Language of instruction
Our Changemaker Courses are currently available in English. Our ambition is to make it available in a number of languages over time.
Modes of delivery
At present the Changemaker Courses are designed to be delivered through two modes:
Blended: students come together for in-person sessions (6 hours per week) and independent work online (4 hours per week)
Online: in light of Covid-19, we have adapted all courses to be delivered through an online-only model, which involves synchronous online sessions via Zoom or similar (6 hours per week) and independent work online (4 hours per week).
In the future we aim to also offer courses through an offline learning model in areas that lack connectivity.
Learning
Learning at Amala involves shifts in thinking and behaviour which result in an increased capacity to have a positive impact on the world. Our curriculum was developed collaboratively in partnership with our founding education partner, UWC South East Asia, and involved over 150 educators and refugee students from around the world. It is designed to:
Build agency - we develop the ability of our students to develop agency: to positively influence their own life and the world around them. Agency is at the heart of our learning model and sits at the heart of all Amala learning.
Develop competencies - using the OECD’s transformative competencies as a starting point, Amala learning builds a set of competencies that will support students in taking action for positive change.
Be contextually inclusive - our curriculum is designed to work in a range of contexts, taking into account diverse cultures and religions. We start from the assumption that our students have unique lived experiences and prior knowledge and we seek to build on them through the Amala curriculum.
Create community - we recognise the importance of building social connections to engage. Amala creates safe and inclusive spaces where students build strong bonds with their classmates, supporting them to learn.
Support facilitators - our curriculum provides clear and detailed guidance on how to deliver high quality learning that develops agency. This means that facilitators can be trained to run any Amala course no matter its subject area.
Certification
Upon completion of a Changemaker Course, students receive a certificate from Amala and our partner school UWC South East Asia.
After Amala
All our students who graduate from an Amala Changemaker Course join the Amala alumni community of changemakers, giving them access to a supportive global network and opportunities. Some students go on to pursue other educational programmes or re-enrol in the education system. Others go on to find professional opportunities, such as entrepreneurial projects, internships, and volunteering.
Meet our Changemaker Course alumni
Mofti opened his own kiosk business in Kakuma camp. Read more here.
Sura has gone on to pursue a career as a pharmacist. Read more here.
Fatima is a facilitator for the High School Diploma in Amman. Read more here.
Learn more
Prospective students - Visit our Study With Us page to see where our Changemaker Courses are being run and if we are currently accepting applications.
Prospective partners - Visit our Get Involved page to find out more about running Amala programmes.