Ten years ago Australia ‘stopped the boats’. At the same time a small group of refugees in Indonesia received a $200 donation and started a two-room school.

Husband and wife, Muzafar Ali and Nagina Zahra were co-founders of that first school before being resettled in Adelaide in 2015. Since then the schools in Indonesia have grown. There are now over 1300 refugee students and 130 refugee teachers. 

They started with a few notebooks and pens and against the advice of the UNHCR. Now the students are obtaining school leaving certificates and entering universities around the world. Alumni from the schools have spoken at the United Nations and become doctors, teachers and lawyers, and they are returning to support the schools in Indonesia, where many went to school for the first time in their lives.