Building resilience in refugee children

Thousands of children have been directly affected by the onset, take-over, and defeat of ISIS over the last 6 years. Thousands have been forced to leave their homes, have seen their families hurt or killed, and have suffered physical, mental, and emotional abuse from all sides. It is estimated that thousands of children are currently housed in refugee camps. The vast numbers are alarming and countries and societies are hard-pressed to find solutions. What governments and societies do in the next few years to assist these children is going to have a tremendous impact on future terrorist activities. It has been estimated that a whole new generation of terrorists is currently in the making, due to the difficult conditions and lack of educational and mental health resources in the refugee camps. One of the threads of research and in fact one of the main research questions is: given the fact that so many people are exposed to drastic violence and other conditions cited in other chapters, why aren’t there more terrorists, and can we safely predict that due to past results, future results can be predicted? Resilience seems to have a strong impact on whether a person recovers from a trauma and is able to get on with their lives. Current research points to the fact that it is better to build something positive rather than try break down something negative. The purpose of this study is to discover whether learning a new cognitive skill (the English language) can have a positive effect on building resiliency in young people. The results indicate that there is a significant statistical connection between learning English and building resilience.