From 1st to the 3rd of October 2025, JRS Advocacy and Education colleagues participated in the conference “Refugees & Migrants in Our Common Home”, sponsored by The Mother Cabrini Institute on Immigration of Villanova University, at the Augustinian Patristic Pontifical Institute in Rome, Italy. The conference brought together a variety of participants from academia, civil society and government from more than 40 Countries around the world to tackle the challenges of education for migrants and refugees and what schools and universities can do to facilitate solutions.  

The event included support from several partners, including the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD), the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), the Foundation Augustinians Across the World, our own Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), the Scalabrinian International Migration Institute (SIMI), and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). 

This conference was important for JRS with our key programmatic work centring on delivering quality education for refugees as a means of fostering agency among refugee peoples. As outlined in our Global Strategic Framework 2025-2029, one of the long-term programmatic priorities regarding education includes advocating for upholding the right to recognition in national education systems, and prioritising teacher formation and alternative education pathways, especially for girls and other marginalised groups. This conference was a concrete example of how we can strategically strengthen links with higher education institutes including Jesuit universities and similar organisations.  

During this education conference, JRS played a key role in co-facilitating one of the working groups that focused on advocacy with a focus on higher education, secondary school education and collaboration advocacy. A key speaker presenting at the education conference and also an advocacy working group facilitator was Dieu Luundo Merci (learn more about his work here), a refugee from the DRC  and member of the JRS family who is also a Founder and project coordinator at Vijana Twaweza Club who lives in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. 

Thankfully, Luundo was able to travel and attend the education conference, with the legal support of JRS despite bureaucratic difficulties. At the conference, Luundo was able to present a talk, meet different partners and potential partners that he can collaborate with in the future. As demonstrated, it is important for JRS to support refugees and give them a voice to foster meaningful refugee participation within these spaces.  

Another refugee who shared her story during the education conference was Viktoria Palamuk from Ukraine who formerly interned with JRS in Rome. Her testimony was powerful and inspiring as she recounted her personal story of having to flee Ukraine to Poland and seeking refuge in Lithuania. While describing the importance of education, Viktoria mentioned:

“I continued my studies and stopped feeling like a refugee here. I was a student. And studying really healed me. I became deeply interested in international humanitarian law, refugee law, and human rights protection. At that moment, an inner transformation took place, and I realized that I wanted to help forcibly displaced people worldwide. Because I know what it’s like to be in a foreign country without knowledge of the laws, regulations and your rights, without money, and without knowing the local language, sometimes even without documents.”