Defining a place: A cross-cultural student project

How do you define a place? Is it simply a location? A space that exists with or without you? Is it a home? A workspace?

Defining place is a question that Katherine L. Hall posed to two very different groups: her Virginia Tech students and those in another of her courses who are part of Elimisha Kakuma, an educational organization within Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. It provides access to higher education opportunities for high school graduates living in the camp. Students receive academic instruction, exam preparation, and guidance through the college application process. 

“I felt by connecting my students from the two different venues that I can build relationships and understanding between the two groups,” said Hall, instructor and internship/bridge experience coordinator in the Department of English. “Understanding place means not only considering your own sense of place, but also how others perceive it.”

Through the collaboration, the students from Virginia Tech and Elimisha Kakuma came together this fall to explore the meaning of place. Over the summer, Hall shared her vision of this project with her public speaking students at the camp, where she volunteers as an instructor via Zoom. 

This laid the groundwork for a project in Hall’s three sections of First Year Writing. Her objective was to encourage students in Blacksburg to think beyond their own place and engage with the experiences of refugee students in Kakuma. To begin, the Virginia Tech students conducted research by exploring Elimisha Kakuma’s website and watching Mary Maker’s Ted Talk. Maker is one of the founders of the educational organization. After this, students wrote about how they thought the refugee students would define a place.

Then Hall shared slide decks created by each of her students in Kakuma on how that group actually defined place. Her First Year Writing students also shared their ideas of what place means at Virginia Tech. With this, they thought about the significance of Kakuma as a primary place for these refugee students, despite not being able to claim legal citizenship in Kenya.

“Their citizenship remains in the countries that they or their ancestors fled from even though they cannot and do not want to go back there,” wrote Emily Sandt, a Virginia Tech student who plans to major in civil engineering. “It seems unfair for these people to have to live somewhere that they cannot even claim to be a citizen of, and some were not even given the option of living somewhere else. While some refugees might end up living in different countries eventually, they will still think back on the time they spent at Kakuma and remember it as a place where they held memories with friends and family.”

Rather than sending 60 slide decks to her students in Kakuma, Hall had her three classes vote for the top five projects that best capture the essence of the assignment. She plans to share these with the students at Elimisha Kakuma in the near future. Sandt’s project is among the slide decks chosen by Hall’s classes to share.

Also, among the entries to be shared is Mia Gagliano’s, who is a mathematics major. Her sense of place encompasses what Hall had hoped her students would glean from this experience.

“To me a place means somewhere that I can feel a sense of community and belonging,” Gagliano said. “It is somewhere that I can feel safe, loved, happy, and be myself. It is somewhere that I am not afraid to show who I am. It is somewhere that I can find the people I love. It is somewhere that people can come together from many different backgrounds and experiences, but all be together, and love the same place at the same time.”

She was moved by the refugee students’ expressions of gratitude and pride in their community, which differed from her initial expectations. The images shared by the refugee students further reinforced the idea of love and unity within their place.

“This project has shifted my sense of place from its physical being to existing in a more emotional state,” said Sandt. “The Kakuma students talked about having a sense of belonging in their place, and I could not agree more. I would now define place as wherever you find people who love and appreciate you, wherever you develop memories and personal connections, and wherever you consider significant to your life and who you are or have become.”