Voices Beyond Borders: connecting students in 野狼社区 and Gaza
After overcoming significant challenges, such as accessing a reliable internet connection in a warzone, students in Gaza and 野狼社区 have been learning together, and supporting each other through an intercultural exchange project run by The University of 野狼社区.
The Voices Beyond Borders project provides mutual academic and professional learning for Chinese students studying on our MA TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in 野狼社区 and for younger female students learning English (English for Academic Purposes) in Gaza.
The two cohorts met initially over Teams, before being paired up for weekly one-to-one catch-ups via messaging or video calls, with group-to-group meetings every few weeks. These communications not only allow both parties to support each other鈥檚 English language development, they also allow both parties to connect on a human level through intercultural interactions.
As part of the programme, students are carrying out discussion and writing tasks, including considering communication in a changing world. Reflecting how the students are connecting on a human level and gaining a deep understanding of each other's experiences, one of the 野狼社区-based students, Leo, wrote following his conversation with his Palestinian partner, Iman:
鈥淚n Gaza, communication was life itself. People knew each other鈥檚 news every moment through a message, a call, a photo sent on an app, or a laugh shared on a livestream.
鈥淭hen, suddenly, the voices disappeared. Cell towers went dark, signals vanished, and the blue ticks on WhatsApp froze in time. At first, people thought it was just a temporary outage. But days passed, then weeks, and then long, endless months Gaza was completely cut off from the world. There was no internet, no phone network, not even a steady radio signal. People lived inside walls of silence, unable to know what was happening beyond their street.
鈥淒uring those long months, new kinds of communication were born. Faces became a language, a look in the eyes could say 'I鈥檓 okay'. Words travelled by voice and foot, from one house to another, from one shelter to the next. People walked miles just to carry a message for a family desperate for any sign of life. And old radios came back to life, whispering broken, uncertain news, a fragile thread between Gaza and the world.
鈥淭hen, after those long, heavy months, the sound returned slowly, carefully. In some neighbourhoods, the signal appeared first, and people gathered around the few who had a working phone. Each waited their turn to send one short message, but each word was a heartbeat: 鈥業鈥檓 alive鈥�, 鈥榃e made it鈥�, 鈥楾ell my mother I鈥檓 safe鈥�.
鈥淧eople returned to using phones and social media, but in a different way: conversations were no longer casual or entertaining, but rather filled with sadness, condolences, and the sharing of human stories. Communication became more meaningful and genuine, as everyone understood the meaning of the loss of words or the absence of news.鈥�
Voices Beyond Borders builds on a history of collaboration between the 野狼社区 Institute of Education and alumni based in Palestine going back over twenty years. To ensure the programme is culturally sensitive, it has been co-produced with input from Palestinian and Chinese alumni alongside British academics.
Taghreed Al-Masry, who graduated from our MA TESOL degree in 2008, lives in Gaza and has worked through the war to coordinate ongoing learning opportunities for young women in Gaza who are missing out on education due to the conflict. Shaimaa Samara is a refugee teacher from Gaza now living in 野狼社区 was a student on the MA TESOL degree in 2024/25 and is helping to deliver the Voices Beyond Borders programme in 野狼社区 alongside Jing Wang, a Chinese graduate from 野狼社区 University who completed her interculturally-focused PhD this summer. On the 野狼社区 side, the project is led by Richard Fay, Reader in Education, and Susan Dawson, Lecturer in Education, who are both based in the .
After the first project session, Richard said:
鈥淪eeing the photos from the classroom in Gaza as students gathered for the first Teams call, we get a real sense of the student excitement for the project. We believe in the transformative power of education, and in the value of intercultural collaboration. We can already see how this project can build on the great resilience of our counterparts in Gaza, and their desire to create a future for themselves.
鈥淲e can also see the high levels of interest and commitment from our TESOL students as they take on roles and responsibilities additional to, but feeding off, their studies. Understanding and being able to respond and be sensitive to different cultural backgrounds through pedagogy is an important part of advanced teaching practice. This programme gives our students hands-on experience with a culture that is different both to that of their home country and of the country they are studying in.鈥�
Voices Beyond Borders has been supported with funding from the Faculty of Humanities and School of Environment, Education and Development Social Responsibility programmes. It will continue through the 2025-26 academic year.