Writing a new future: Education as a passage to promise

At 22, Dah Dah Mu stands at the edge of a new chapter: she’s one of just 20 refugee students in the region awarded the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway scholarship to pursue higher education abroad. More than personal success, Dah Dah Mu’s journey embodies her entire community’s hopes for a future built on learning, not limbo.

By Lesly Lotha

From growing up in the Mae La Camp to the promise of Australian university halls, Dah Dah Mu’s journey has been built on quiet determination. At just six years old, she arrived in Mae La with her mother, siblings and extended family, escaping both the conflict in Myanmar. “In Myanmar, we lived in fear and had no access to education,” she recalls. The camp offered safety and a chance to attend primary school.

By middle school she’d graduated within the camp’s formal system, and this was the start of her journey.That path led her to be one of only twenty refugees in the region selected by the Refugee Student Settlement Pathway (RSSP) for undergraduate study in Australia. Now she awaits her humanitarian visa as she researches university requirements. “I hope to arrive by year’s end and plan to study business entrepreneurship”, said Dah Dah Mu.

The RSSP is a pilot programme open to refugees registered with the United Nations Agency High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and delivered in partnership with Australian universities under the Refugee Welcome University Sponsorship Consortium (ARWUSC) and Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia (CRSA). Administered by Skill Path Australia alongside Refugee Education Australia, the program grants permanent humanitarian visas to refugees aged 18–30 in Malaysia, India or Thailand, providing a much-needed lifeline.

Her triumph is mirrored and enriched by her friends and peers, Law Ra Htwat, Naw Eh Wah Paw and Seng Nu Pan, who also applied for RSSP scholarships and are awaiting the selection process. Each have also had to overcome their hardships to pursue and complete their education, but today they are all employed and working for organizations that help and support the camp community.

With scarce resources and little exposure to life beyond the camp, only a few schools in the Mae La Camp offers Thai classes, leaving most refugees without the language skills they need to interact with Thais creating a form of isolation. This sense of inertia breeds restlessness that can be heard: the girls have ambition and do not want to be in limbo, unsure if or when they’ll ever leave. Unable to return to Myanmar and with little hope of doing so soon, they pin their hopes on an intervention that might allow them to shape a better future.

For Dah Dah Mu, it has always been hope, not fear, that has guided her forward. Poised to step onto a plane bound for Australia, she carries not only her own ambitions but the aspirations of every child in camp who aspires to learn, undaunted by borders or otherwise.