Elementary and secondary education for over 200 refugee children

Fiona bursts into the director's office beaming with a smile from ear to ear. "UNHCR agreed to resettle [another unac-companied minor] this morning!" To Fiona, the Director of StARS' Children's Education Program, this is something to smile about.

A small percentage of the students enrolled at St. Andrew’s CEP program are unaccompanied minors – typically kids with no family or home, forced to band together to spend the night wherever they can and work jobs on top of their studies. While education for children is the number one pri-ority for most parents, these children unfortunately lack the support system of a home. StARS alleviates the incredible obstacles these children face by paying for uniforms, school obstacles these children face by paying for uniforms, school transportation, and accreditation fees – and of course pro-vides all children with two hot meals a day. But the reality is that life for these young CEP students is very hard with-out family and support. To most of us, being with family around the holidays is something to look forward to each year. Most of us would not like to imagine what being alone on these special days would feel like. Last year, all the unac-companied minors had a dinner together at Fiona's on Christmas day. It was not exactly Christmas for everyone at the dinner as our students are from numerous religious backgrounds, but it felt good to be together celebrating in some semblance of a family gathering.

Despite her efforts to create the vestiges of family, Fiona is the first to admit that these young people need more. They are in extreme risk living in Cairo without family or connec-tions. So for this reason, Fiona beams when she hears an-other one of her unaccompanied students will be resettled to the U.S. She worries for them when they arrive in Ameri-ca, where resettlement case workers will assist and follow them for a few months or until they turn eighteen, but still, there are jobs in America, more jobs than Cairo. And then there is the potential for college for these young people in the States.

Still, these unaccompanied young people are but portion of CEP's student body. There are over 180 other students in CEP and a waiting list of over 200. The waiting list for children’s classes has been closed for 18 months, but not be-cause of lack of interest. It's a bittersweet fact that facilities are simply operating beyond capacity. Yet we still hope to make our services available to all the refugee children on our list in the near future, but cannot do this without the reour list in the near future, but cannot do this without the re-newed, generous support of donors. Like every year and every gift, there is the promise of so much potential.