Shelbie Harris
News Editor
Imagine uprooting your entire family to an unfamiliar country over 1,300 mountainous miles away and this was your only means to escape the constant barrage of artillery shells and AK-47 fire. You and hundreds of people boarded what has become “The Last Train to Europe,” longing only for a warm meal and a dry bed for your children to sleep.
If you knew thousands of refugees from Syria and Iraq nearly fulfilled this journey into northern Macedonia and southern Serbia, only just before Balkan countries started closing their borders, would you still have hope?
That was never a question for Andrea Vicic and Hayli Worthington, graduate students at Idaho State University. The pair decided in February they would travel to a refugee camp in Tabanovce, a Macedonian village in eyesight of the Serbian border, to complete research for their graduate programs.
“They are incredibly humble,” said Alex Bolinger, an assistant professor in the College of Business who has known the duo since their undergrad years and provided guidance with their research. “They are remarkable students. Not just anyone would be that proactive and have that big of heart to say ‘gosh there is suffering happening and we have to go help in any way we can.’”
From Vancouver, Canada, Vicic met Worthington, an Idaho native from the rural town of Paul, six years ago as track teammates, and their relationship quickly flourished. Now close friends and roommates, Vicic is a Master of Business Administration student, while Worthington is pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health.
The two were working constantly together exchanging research ideas, following the crisis and contemplating the idea of travelling abroad during the middle of a semester. Eventually, the ongoing situation moved the couple enough for them to pull the trigger on such a bold adventure.
“The refugee crisis in Europe is obviously a controversial topic right now and I’m really interested in global health,” Worthington said, adding she was apprehensive leaving the country when she had so much studying to finish. “I’m starting my thesis and I decided to change the focus to the mental health of refugees in host countries. I really wanted to understand the environmental factors for refugees during this transient process.”
After meeting with Bolinger, Vicic used the research opportunity to gain credits in an independent studies course that concentrated her efforts into cross-cultural negotiation between refugees and aid industries such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The idea that people make money off sending aid to other countries, known as aid contracts, is what initially sparked her interest.
Their host for the trip was Operation Mobilization (OM), an organization that works in over 110 countries, who collaborated with AGAPE, the official ministry of the Macedonian Evangelical Church, which includes about 25 churches from all around the country and provides outreach at the refugee camp at the main border crossing between Greece and Macedonia.
“We had tried to find contacts to go to Greece,” Vicic said. “But the guy we knew there, who had worked in Macedonia previously during the refugee crisis in Kosovo ten years ago, said not to go to Greece and to choose Macedonia instead. He’s smarter than us and has been working with refugees for years so we took his word for it.”
After considering refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt only two weeks before their planned departure, they realized language barriers would be a large obstacle to overcome and couldn’t risk missing two weeks of school and coming home empty-handed. Vicic said she was glad they chose Macedonia, a major transit country for traveling any direction into Europe because of where the Balkan Mountains are located, and that they arrived during a time when the number of refugees funneling out of Greece peaked before the borders closed down.
“It was amazing,” Vicic said, as her smile caused the pair to giggle. “We couldn’t have planned it any better.”
Their research included face-to-face interviews with volunteers from AGAPE, field observations of interactions, staying conditions and compiling individual stories.
Though both travelled to conduct independent research for their programs, the two combined their efforts into one socioecological model for a presentation at the 2016 Graduate Research Symposium hosted on April 2, 2016. Unknowingly, they signed up for the wrong research day and were under the impression their presentation wasn’t until the end of April.
Halfway through spring break, emails tipped them off that only 10 days remained before the competition.
“We realized we had to do a month’s worth of work in one week,” Worthington said. “So we didn’t really have a whole lot of time to evaluate or think about things. The process was a bit more intense in pressure than usual. I literally cried at one point.”
“I cried too,” Vicic added.
But, after 10 days of hard work and some nights without sleep, the couple presented their interdisciplinary work, and to their surprise, won the poster category and a $50 cash prize.
According to Ryan Lindsay, an assistant professor in the public health graduate program, the socioecological model is built on the premise that many factors related to environment, society and relationships impact the health of any community, including refugees.
“Hayli [Worthington] applied systems-thinking when considering the many ways that health could be impacted by assessing the temporary refugee camp environment,” Lindsay said. “What she did takes a real appreciation of complexity in order to understand potential ways to improve a system rather than an isolated problem in that system.”
Together, the two shared something not many people get the opportunity to experience. They made unforgettable memories, ate the best Baklava of their lives and formed lasting relationships with people like Nikola Galevska, who Vicic said is very involved with what is going on over there and created the Charis Response Network to improve communication in Macedonia and all other countries on the European transit route.
“Best February I have ever spent in my life,” Worthington said. “I learned there are two sides and both are trying to protect life. Governments have to protect their people and on the other side, there are human rights in the world. Facing the reality that there is danger on both sides, there’s credibility to both sides but a third option exists, which focuses on if we can influence people and how are we influencing them with our words and the love that we show them.”
