Goundo Diarra
Education Research Assistant
As an Education Research Assistant, Goundo Diarra supports regional and global research opportunities with regards to refugee education in the Middle East and East Africa.
Prior to moving to Canada, Goundo lived in her native Mali, Senegal, Nigeria and Kenya. She enjoys travelling a lot as well as learning languages. In addition to learning Arabic, she currently speaks English, French, Spanish, Swahili and Bamanankan. Goundo’s research interests focus on ensuring the retention of refugee girls at the secondary school level and her Master’s in Migration and Diaspora Studies thesis focuses on the impact that paid parental economic opportunities has on educational outcomes for secondary school female refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement in Northwestern Kenya.
Goundo is interested in researching on global and regional refugee education opportunities in terms of how to support collaboration between stakeholders to ensure that female refugees are not pushed out or left out of the education sphere. Education is a fundamental right and she believes that it is the key to self-agency and determination. Every child deserves the right to education. The ability to support inter-regional and international research on education opportunities and partnerships between stakeholders in the Middle East and those in East Africa really attracted her to LERRN. She is interested in broadening her understanding of the specific challenges unique to each region as well as mechanisms that can be taken to eliminate such barriers.
In her time at LERRN, Goundo hopes to create opportunities for stakeholders in the Middle East and East Africa to collaborate on research initiatives that promote education opportunities for refugee children in their perspective regions.