It’s 3:00AM in Cairo, and Head of School Brad Bates is calling you. 

This is how Tyson Laa Deng (South Sudan,’13) began his journey from a refugee camp in Egypt to the campus of Dublin School. 

It’s wintertime in New Hampshire, and you’re seeing snow for the first time. Again, Mr. Bates is calling you, this time encouraging you to ski down the face of Mt. Washington where he waits below – “you’ll figure it out!” And you did!

This is Tyson Laa Deng learning what it means to be a student at Dublin School. 

It’s July in Dublin, and hot. You’re a cybersecurity engineer with PayPal now. Head of School Brad Bates welcomes you home to an auditorium full of eager, happy to see you, faces.

This is Tyson Laa Deng, Dublin School Trustee, returning to to campus alongside alumnae Rahila Talayee (Afghanistan, ’23) and Talia Jada (South Sudan, ’24) to help launch Dublin’s Global Scholar Program (GSP), a milestone event in our longstanding commitment to supporting outstanding students from international crisis-zones across the globe.

THE BIG PICTURE

We believe that education is a fundamental right, yet one that is denied to a large portion of the global population. For individual students, educational attainment opens the door to a life of dignity, improving all types of outcomes while empowering students to exercise a positive agency over their lives. But the effects of educating the individual are far broader. When you educate a single child, you begin to elevate entire communities. Rates of educational attainment have been shown to promote economic growth with benefits to entire populations, foster more resilient and inclusive political systems, reduce gender inequality, improve health outcomes, and even catalyze environmentally friendly behavior. Education is the golden road to a better world.

The Global Scholars Program (GSP) embodies the core of Dublin School’s mission  - To help students grow into people who seek Truth and act with Courage. Dublin School has a long history of successfully incorporating and supporting international students from all backgrounds, including those from war-torn countries who need complete financial aid and wrap-around services in order to attend Dublin School. Earlier this month, over fifty people gathered in the  Fountain Arts Building to hear from a panel of previous Global Scholars as they spoke with Head of School, Brad Bates about their time at Dublin School and the impact of a Dublin education on their lives since. 
 

For both international and domestic students, an education at Dublin is a point of entry from which young-scholars can orient themselves in the world while developing as critical and engaged thinkers who can lead meaningful lives and build meaningful connections however they choose to do so.

Dublin’s Global Scholars are also prisms through which local action can exceed itself to reach far beyond the immediate horizon of Mount Monadnock. Talia Jada ‘24 was quick to point to these ripple effects, reminding her audience that “When you help one person, it’s not a 1:1 transaction.” Individuals are networked, inherently, to others. When a single student is educated and empowered, the effects cascade throughout that network. 

It may be that Dublin’s Global Scholars return home and become leaders in their communities (when safe to do so), and this would be an outcome to celebrate. There are also reasons to celebrate if they instead choose to stay and build a life in the U.S. The bottom line is these individuals are able to participate in the world in ways scarcely imaginable before. And beyond that, they become trailblazers for others who may look to follow in their footsteps.

A GROUP EFFORT

Dublin has received incredible support from the Greater Monadnock Community in supporting its international students. Friends and family of the School have been quick to welcome students like Tyson, Rahila, and Talia into their homes. By doing so, they have become convinced of Dublin’s right to serve these students, and they are all the more compelled by the idea of creating the Global Scholars Program as a means to do so.

In particular, this program could not exist without the ongoing support of our Global Scholars Committee members (pictured below). This group of parents and friends of the school have taken on much of the challenge of educating and engaging the broader Monadnock community to find support for Dublin’s Global Scholars.

Pictured from left to right: Helena Rozier, P’14, Teresa Imhoff P’13,’18, Julia Howe P'18, Nina McIntyre

Teresa Imhoff, P’13,’18, a member of the Global Scholars Committee, is a great champion of the program. The Imhoff family hosted Rahila during her time at Dublin - as Rahila will tell you, Mrs. Imhoff is “like my American mother.” Mrs. Imhoff also understands the urgency of creating this program from the perspective of a former member of the Dublin School Admissions team:

“I worked in the Admissions Office at Dublin School for 12 years and then with international students for two years after that. My interaction with these kids meant that my world expanded… I loved it, but there was one thing that I did not love… There were always bright, young, engaging students from around the world who had to be dismissed from consideration quicker than I would want because we simply did not have the financial aid dollars to fulfill their dreams.”

OUR DREAM IS TO SAY YES 

The goal of the Global Scholars Program is to expand our capacity to say YES to these students. While Dublin has welcomed a number of outstanding global scholars over the years, it has been a persistent challenge to marshal the resources to meet their need, and until now has involved managing the opportunity cost of possibly having to reduce aid for domestic students in need.

 That’s why, to scaffold this program, the school will be establishing a restricted endowment fund of approximately $3 Million to provide full tuition and wrap-around financial support to Global Scholars every year, forever—all without impacting available aid for domestic students.

AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACT

Dublin is a small, independent boarding school in New Hampshire, that feels the weight of a damaged and distressed world mostly from a distance. But here is an opportunity to prefigure the better world, to actually move beyond the wishful thinking, to act in the ways available to us all. Helena Rozier, P’14 and GSP committee member said it best: 

“What is perhaps new now is the helplessness so many of us feel in the face of a world that often seems to be spinning out of control. Global Scholars gives us a chance to ACT, and act responsibly, compassionately, and locally, to live our principles in a way that sustains us as well as those we help.”

For the friends and family of Dublin, the Global Scholars Program is an opportunity to see the world as it is and affirm our fitness to meet the challenge put to us by Paul Lehmann, all those years ago, to “live life usefully for the benefit of fellow man.”

Dublin School looks forward to supporting three Global Scholars from Afghanistan this upcoming school year, and with a little help from our friends, Dublin School will forever be able to say “Welcome Home” to determined young-scholars from international crisis-zones across the world.

Many thanks to those who joined us in launching this program. A big thank you to the Global Scholars committee for their work so far, and to Tyson, Rahila, and Talia for returning to Dublin and sharing their stories.

“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.” -- Kahlil Gibran, Mirrors of the Soul

Article by Liam Sullivan