First Year Hon. Mention: Business Plan for a Refugee Coaching Network

SOSC 1341 Introduction to the Social Economy. CD: Caroline Hossein, TA: Reena Shadaan.

Abstract

To create change takes real people, real effort, and a real plan. The assessors were reminded of all three while reading Okello Mark’s Oyat’s “Business Plan for a Refugee Coaching Network.” Too often in the West, the suffering of others remains in the abstract, the subject of late night commercials. But Mr. Oyat’s work, authored from the Ifo camp in the Dadaab refugee district in northeastern Kenya, is a vivid, real example of LA&PS students and faculty working together to bring hope to a refugee community. In it, the author systemically lays out a business plan to improve the lives of the camp’s most vulnerable persons—its women and children—by supporting them as they grow, learn, and set up communities. In this way, argues Mr. Oyat, “people are engaged into their own development through coaching.” Since the women and children of the camps know their own local conditions best, teaching them how to establish their own classrooms, services and businesses provides agency to those who need it the most, while avoiding the colonialism of western-directed, centralized efforts.

Okello Mark Oyat’s work is a well-thought out, socially conscious, and empowering document that has the potential for a real impact within his community. Mr. Oyat has a plan, explains it with precision and care, and makes his case for the necessity of implementing the plan effectively. The context of its creation makes his work all the more exceptional, reminding students and faculty in LA&PS alike of how our teaching, learning, and writing can create positive change.