DECATUR, Ga. — Mehsod Paw’s journey spans the globe. A civil war forced her Burmese family to resettle in a Thai refugee camp. Paw’s family moved to the United States when she was 12, and she found company and a family at the Global Village Project.      

“Because of the war, we moved away and it was hard to make sense of who I was and my identity,” Paw said. “It was very hard for me to make friends, and school was challenging too because I didn’t understand anything in the classroom. So I felt very lonely.”

The Global Village Project started in 2009, and staff and volunteers teach refugee girls from around the world. Allison Ezell, the CEO and Head of School, said GVP enrolls about 45 girls a year, making for a melting pot of learning and experience. 

“A village of students and their families who all learn from each other,” Ezell said. “The girls come here with a gap in their formal education, but they bring with them resilience and strength and a sense of purpose in life. You watch them over the months and years start really blending in. You see best friends from other sides of the world speaking common languages, and it’s part of that beautiful thing we do here of building bridges between the girls and welcoming them into our country.”

Ezell said most of the students come from Afghanistan, several African countries, Southeast Asia and Latin America, with at least a dozen languages spoken among the students. She said typically, girls do not get the formal education their male counterparts get in their home countries.

Students collaborated, answered math questions with ease and smoothly transitioned from class to class with some wearing cultural garb and others in more casual apparel. Art projects and flags from all over the world dotted the hallways of the school, which operates out of Decatur Presbyterian Church. 

Graduates eventually go on to high school, often Clarkston High School, and they’re paired with a mentor. Clarkston is considered one of the most diverse areas in the country.

“We are a country of immigrants, and these are some of our most remarkable ones here,” Ezell said. “The refugee experience is a really hard one, but the joy you see on these girls’ faces, you don’t know what they’ve been through because there’s such an energy and joy for learning and being here.”

Hundreds of girls have now gone through the program. The school plans to expand and build a new facility, which will allow it to serve more than twice as many students. The new space is set to open next August.

The Global Village Project had such a profound impact on Mehsod Paw, she’s now back at GVP in a teaching capacity, as she looks to inspire new generations of refugees.

“I understand the students’ struggles because I’ve walked through that journey,” Paw said. “Just being able to understand that, I can relate to the student a lot more. They probably can relate to me, and maybe I could be their role model. If I could walk through that hardship, maybe they could too.”