A forum to launch the initiative will be held at Victoria University of Wellington, 9:00am to 6:00pm, Friday 6 December 2019. Representatives from universities, polytechnics, wānanga and private training establishments (PTEs) are invited to participate in the forum.

The launch forum has two main aims:

• to bring representatives from Tertiary Education Organisations (TEOs) together with refugee-background and asylum-seeking students to share best-practice about how to advocate for, and work with, this student group
• to launch a new National Tertiary Network that will work alongside TEC to improve refugee-background and asylum-seeker student learning journeys and outcomes from 2020 onwards.

There is no charge to attend the forum. Contact Sarah Willette at willetsara@myvuw.ac.nz to register (RSVP by 22 November 2019).

Additional event information:

The action plan for the National Tertiary Network will be co-designed during the forum, and will include discussions about how to:

• build capacity within our TEOs to respond to refugee-background students and honour commitments within Te Tiriti o Waitangi to Māori students’ success
• respond to the increased New Zealand refugee quota from 2020 and the six new resettlement locations
• integrate consideration of refugee-background learners within the new polytechnic architecture
• enhance pathways for refugee-background students from secondary study into and out of TEOs through bridging, scholarships, equity resourcing, capacity building and internships
• advocate for asylum-seeking students wanting to participate in tertiary education
• support greater refugee-background tertiary student agency and national networking
• work within the Asia Pacific to enable displaced people to access tertiary qualifications in Aotearoa, and to plan for the likelihood of increased numbers of ‘climate change refugees’ from Oceania
• move towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the vision for equal and open access to education for displaced peoples, articulated within UNESCO Education 2030
• connect into and benefit from international networks and initiatives such as the UNHCR’s upcoming Paris conference on ‘Education as a Complementary Pathway to Resettlement’ (5-6 November, 2019) and the Association of Commonwealth Universities ‘World Access to Higher Education Day Event’ at Kings College London (26 November, 2019).