Madiha
My name is Madiha Ali.
In 2014, I arrived in Indonesia with my family. Like many refugee families, we arrived with uncertainty, limited rights, and no access to formal education. Months passed, and then more months, with no clear pathway forward. We knew that resettlement, if it came at all, would take years.
For my father, this was particularly difficult. Education had always been central in our household. And watching his children and the children of other refugee families sit idle for months without access to schooling was deeply troubling. It wasn’t just about missed classes; it was about the loss of routine, purpose and hope.
Out of that concern, a small group of refugees including my father came together and asked a simple but urgent question 'If our children cannot access education, what can we do about it?'. That question led to the creation of Refugee Learning Center. It started modestly. It began as a simple idea: that if education was not going to be accessible to us, what we would create opportunities for it ourselves. We recognised a gap, and we recognized our collective capacity to fill that gap. We began with 18 students, a handful of volunteer teachers, and no certainty about how long the centre would survive. What we did have was commitment, collective effort, and a shared understanding that education was not something we could afford to postpone.
Importantly, the centre was refugee-led from the start. Decisions were made by the community, for the community. The early volunteer teachers were all women, many of whom had not had opportunities to work or lead since displacement. Teaching gave them a renewed sense of purpose, responsibility, and confidence at a time when displacement had taken much of that away.
With the support of Same Skies, which played an essential role in facilitating resources and strengthening organisational structures, Refugee Learning Center evolved from a small volunteer initiative into a functioning community school. Importantly, Same Skies never replaced refugee leadership; instead, they invested in it. Their model centred on refugee self-reliance and resilience allowed us to build not just a programme but systems. The ripple effects were significant. Once one learning centre demonstrated what was possible, others followed. Refugee Learning Center became an example that helped inspire a wave of other refugee-led learning initiatives across Indonesia, Hope Learning Center, Refugee Learning Nest, Refugee Talent Program, and many others. This is what Refugee-Led Action looks like when it is properly supported: not one project, but an ecosystem. Not a single intervention, but a multiplier effect.
I also want to touch on the dual benefit of an initiative like Refugee Learning Center.
In education, the immediate beneficiaries are usually seen as the students and in our case, the benefits were clear. Students who attended the learning centre were better prepared academically, more confident, and more likely to transition successfully to formal education after resettlement. We know that former Refugee Learning Center students perform strongly in their new schools because they maintained academic continuity during displacement. What was equally important and often overlooked was the impact on the volunteers themselves. Most of the founding teachers were women. Women who, in a context of prolonged waiting and uncertainty, often had limited opportunities to participate in public life. Teaching at Refugee Learning Center became more than a volunteer role; it became professional development, a source of identity, and in many cases, a pathway to future employment.
I know many women who, after resettlement, found it much easier to enter the workforce because they could demonstrate real, meaningful experience gained through Refugee Learning Center. These initiatives equipped them with transferrable skills - communication, leadership, management - long before they ever set foot in their resettlement countries. This is the dual nature of refugee-led initiatives: they serve the community, and they build the capacity of the individuals who run them.
Importantly, refugee-led initiatives also provide outcomes that are more difficult to quantify yet absolutely essential: psychosocial support, belonging, and a sense of community. For many volunteers the learning centre provided structure in a life defined by unpredictability. It allowed people to contribute meaningfully. It mitigated isolation, particularly for those living in cities where refugees were dispersed and often invisible. It gave young people a sense of direction at a time when their futures felt suspended. And for students attending the school even an informal one restored a sense of normalcy. It reinforced routine, community bonding, and peer support. In contexts where mental health services are scarce, safe spaces like Refugee Learning Center quietly fill gaps that no humanitarian programme alone could meet. This too is self-reliance: communities building the psychosocial scaffolding needed to survive displacement.
The broader lesson from Refugee Learning Center and other initiatives across Southeast Asia is simple: refugees know what they need, and with the right support, they can build effective systems for themselves. But this requires a shift in how refugee-led organisations are perceived and funded.
Too often, refugee-led initiatives operate:
with minimal financial support,
without long-term stability,
with volunteers carrying workloads that, in any other context, would be carried by paid professionals.
Refugee-led organisations have proven themselves repeatedly, yet they still face barriers that do not align with their demonstrated impact. One of the most powerful outcomes of refugee-led initiatives is their long-term impact after resettlement.
The story of Refugee Learning Center is one example among many in Southeast Asia – from learning centres to health initiatives, to women-led community projects, to youth programmes. The collective impact is clear: refugee communities are already doing the work of care, education, protection, and resilience. They are filling gaps that systems leave behind. They are running projects that become institutions, and institutions that become models.
The question is no longer whether Refugee-Led Action works. We have the evidence. The question is whether the international system is ready to scale what refugees have already proven. If we are serious about localisation, about resilience, and about shifting power, then refugee self-reliance initiatives must not be peripheral, they must be central. We do not need to imagine what self-reliance can achieve. We have seen it. We have lived it. And the work of Same Skies' refugee partner organisations continues to demonstrate what becomes possible when refugee leadership is trusted and resourced.
As we discuss impact and solutions, I hope we can move beyond acknowledging refugee leadership in principle and begin operationalising it in practice structurally and sustainably.
