BUILDING RESILIENCE IN YAZIDI IDP CHILDREN THROUGH ELT: AN EXPERIMENTAL SURVEY

Thousands of children are currently housed in refugee camps in the Middle East. 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. Resilience seems to be a prime factor in limiting radicalization. Current research points to the need to explore resilience and how to increase it. This is an introductory study that was begun in Duhok, Iraq in September-October, 2019 and continues to the time of this writing. The research goal was to discover whether learning a new language (English) could have positive effects on building resilience in young people in the IDP camps and refugee camps of the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Three different types of research were originally planned and begun to extract data. However, due to the Covid-19 emergency a new method of data collection was developed with an online survey delivered to the target population. The preliminary data gathered in September/October of 2019 showed associations of positive feelings attached to learning English which in turn are connected to building resilience. This work reports the results of the survey. Findings indicate that learning English can help build resilience in some areas. Learning English seems to bring about an overall improvement in participants’ mood, self-esteem and peer relations. Long term effects will hopefully be increased resilience demonstrated by optimism, better social relations and success in school.