How MIT React is Creating Opportunities for Refugees

Giving By Emily Larson Oct 18, 2021

Many refugees and asylees must overcome enormous barriers to secure employment in their host countries. If they lack digital and host country language skills, it makes it even harder for them to integrate into their new communities.

The Western Union Foundation has partnered with The MIT Refugee Action Hub (MIT ReACT) to address the skills gap these individuals face by providing a certified year-long online learning program, enabling education to employment pathways for promising young refugees, displaced populations, and underserved communities worldwide.

MIT ReACT was launched in May 2017, as a response to the call to find creative solutions to enable refugees to continue their education while experiencing displacement. MIT ReACT’s core mission is to identify, bring together, and cultivate ideas, and deliver solutions that allow talented refugees and displaced populations worldwide to access relevant learning resources and professional development continuity.

As a program partner, Western Union Foundation is announcing the launch of the 2022 program with an open call for applications for select individuals to participate in the 2022 Certificate in Computer and Data Science Program. The curriculum is guided by four pillars which leverages and integrates the core competencies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): academics, skills, professional internships/experiential learning, and networks.

Chosen participants will gain mastery of basic digital concepts and skills through a curated series of online MIT coursework and learn from a global team of experts about innovation and entrepreneurship, creativity, leadership, and how to apply these skills in real time to solve complex problems and succeed in the modern workforce. As part of the MIT ReACT community, participants will join a robust network of university and industry leaders, peers, like-minded innovators, and mentors who are there to guide them and connect them to real world opportunities along their career pathways, such as university scholarships, entrepreneurship cultivation and start-up accelerators to help launch innovative ideas into viable businesses.

MIT ReACT welcomes applications from refugees and internally displaced people from anywhere in the world and is also open to key host country peer populations, such as citizens from low-income and underserved communities within Greece, Jordan, Uganda, Colombia, and Uruguay. Admitted learners must be 18 years of age or older.

To apply visit: react.mit.edu/apply

For more information about the Western Union Foundation’s work to improve access to education worldwide, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter.