Victorian education networks, teachers and their students are invited to experience a refugee camp, brought to the big city in a free event created by Médecins Sans Frontières.

You may or may not be aware of Médecins Sans Frontières. Our independent, medical-humanitarian organisation delivers emergency aid in over 58 countries. Each year, our field staff including doctors, nurses, logisticians, water and sanitation experts, administrators, and other medical and non-medical professionals depart on more than 3,400 aid missions around the world. They work alongside more than 22,000 locally hired staff to provide urgent medical care.

After travelling the world for more than a decade, Refugee Camp in Your City will set up in Melbourne this October to show locals what life is like for refugees and displaced people around the world. With this event we aim to create a better understanding of the vulnerability of life for displaced people and refugees who have fled their homes and to educate students about the medical-humanitarian activities undertaken by Médecins Sans Frontières in response to the many health needs of displaced people.

We would like to invite Victorian secondary-level students to walk through makeshift tents, see beds built for cholera patients and touch a tyre sandal made by refugees in places such as Pakistan and Sudan.

Our experienced field staff will be their guides, sharing their own experiences about working in a refugee camp.

The event will take place at:

Treasury Gardens
Melbourne
Saturday 3 October – Sunday 11 October 2009

Entry is free. Group bookings for secondary schools and community organisations are now open via our website www.refugeecamp.msf.org.au. Alternatively you can contact myself for information and further assistance with organising your groups. More than 9,000 visitors, including 3000 school children, experienced Refugee Camp in Your City in Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra in 2008 for the inaugural Australian tour. We hope that Victorian secondary students will also take up the invitation to meet real field workers and discover life in a refugee camp this year.

See http://refugeecamp.msf.org.au/about-refugee-camp.html for more information