Last March, we had the opportunity to visit Jordan as a part of an undergraduate course at Champlain College. While we loved watching sunrises in the Wadi Rum, visiting mosques in Amman, and exploring the ancient ruins scattered across the country, the most impactful part of our trip was visiting the Azraq Education Center.

Based in Azraq, a tiny town on the outskirts of Jordan, the Azraq Education Center provides life changing education and services to Syrian refugee children who have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict. From the moment we stepped foot on their beautiful campus, the students flocked around us, wanting to show their state of the art classrooms and shaded play structures. We spent much longer than anticipated that day laughing with the kids and listening to the center’s staff enthusiastically describe the various programs and services they are able to provide for their community.

The center’s goal is to compensate for their students' lack of education and provide them skills to enable them to graduate, find jobs, and establish roots in Jordan. They are constantly innovating through a number of ways to achieve this goal. Some examples are:

- Their certified Montessori preschool.

- Their development of a hydroponic agriculture system to provide their own food.

- Exchange programs with schools in the U.S. and other countries.

- Coding programs.

- Art therapy programs.

- Hearing aides and physical therapy for students who have been injured during the war.

- Test prep to enable their students to go to universities in Jordan.

- Primarily hiring from the community they serve.

- Providing food for their students’ families and the greater community.

- Free medical consultations from visiting doctors.

- 100% solar powered and recently renovated, state of the art campus with air conditioning.

In addition to being the only site of education available for refugee children, the Azraq center has become an economic engine for this small town, providing jobs and stimulating the local economy.

Perhaps most importantly however, is the first thing we noticed about the center: just how happy and full of joy their students are. These kids who have been forced to flee their homes and have experienced all of the trauma that fleeing from conflict induces, have been given an opportunity to be children once again. They have a space to run, play, and enjoy themselves.

We rode away from the center that day in an inspired silence. We knew we needed to do something to try to support this beautiful place.

Our first initiative to support the Azraq Education Center was hosting a Jordanian cuisine popup dinner. We gathered recipes of the food that we loved so much during our trip and served them to the public at a community kitchen in the Old North End. We raised over $2,700 during our first night and we are planning on hosting another dinner this winter. These funds were raised to support the center’s purchasing of computers for their students’ use.

Our next project has two primary components and is what we are requesting funding for. The first is a narrative filmmaking workshop we will put on for the older students at the center. We’ve talked a lot with the center’s administration, and they have made clear the impact that enrichment programs and getting to see others’ passion has on their students. We chose to teach filmmaking not only because it is a powerful means of self expression, but because it is a highly technical and collaborative art form. In the session, we will go over the basics of filmmaking and narrative storytelling and by the end, the students will have conceived, shot, and edited their very own short films.

Over the course of the week we will be staying at the center teaching the workshop, we will also be working on the second component of our project - the documentary film.

"What happens when two women decide to do something about the Syrian refugee crisis?" – This is the question we will answer with our 20 minute documentary, “Aljudhur” (roots in Arabic). The media is filled with stories othering refugees and creating narratives of fear. Instead, our documentary will highlight their humanness and how by being kind to one another we can lift each other up. The film will tell the inspiring story of the two women, a New York-based marketing director, and a Jordanian designer, who founded and developed the center from its initial $200 budget and tent classrooms to its current beautiful campus and $650,000 annual budget that serves 400 students and their community. The film will show how just a few people were able to create such a huge, real-world impact. This documentary won’t just be an inspiring story of activism, it will also be a crucial story about refugees

The Team:

Ronan Furuta

Ronan is a Degree Design Lab Major at Champlain College. He has been making documentary films for the past 8 years with films screened in festivals across the country. Currently, he is the editor and associate producer of a documentary film directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Kelly Nyks. The film is set to be nationally distributed in 2024. Kelly and Ronan are also collaborating on piloting other documentary series and features. Previously, Ronan taught at and developed curriculum for a wilderness primitive skills school for five years. He coordinated and trained a team of 20 instructors and advised them on their curriculum. This work has provided him with experience teaching hands-on skills (like filmmaking) and working with students of all ages. When not in the studio, Ronan loves going on long hikes with his camera.

Maeve McGuinness

Maeve McGuinness has been a Resident Advisor at Champlain College for the past 3 years, two of which she served as the Lead Resident Advisor of her area. Maeve spent her time in college studying Graphic Design, where she enjoyed cultivating rapport with her professors as well as developing her design sensibilities. These design sensibilities will offer important compositional knowledge within the scope of creating a documentary film with a strong aesthetic draw. Additionally, Maeve coordinated the Roots for Refugees pop-up dinner last spring. She worked with our team of five to host a dinner serving over sixty individuals and raised over $2400 for the Azraq Education fund. As a coordinator of this event, she was able to refine her skills in budgeting, team building, and outreach.