Alumna Awarded Fulbright for Research in Jordan

North­eastern alumna Nina Angeles expe­ri­enced a rich variety of global learning oppor­tu­ni­ties in Jordan throughout her under­grad­uate studies. She first co-​​oped at the Jordan River Foun­da­tion, a com­mu­nity devel­op­ment non­govern­mental orga­ni­za­tion with a mis­sion to engage Jor­da­nians to meet their eco­nomic poten­tial, in 2012. She returned to Amman, Jordan, in the summer of 2014 for a research project and began her senior year studying abroad to learn Arabic while also run­ning an Eng­lish lan­guage pro­gram for young Pales­tinian refugees.

In Sep­tember, she will return to Jordan for a third time—thanks to her recently awarded Ful­bright schol­ar­ship. For her Ful­bright research, Angeles plans to leverage her back­ground in inter­na­tional affairs and human services—her com­bined major at Northeastern—as well as the knowl­edge of social enter­prise she gained from working with microbusi­nesses in South African town­ships, an oppor­tu­nity made pos­sible by the university’s Social Enter­prise Insti­tute. Her work will explore the impact of social enter­prise on Jordan’s state­less Gaza refugees by exam­ining how their fledg­ling busi­nesses affect their ability to improve their eco­nomic standing.

“Receiving this Ful­bright is a huge honor,” said Angeles, SSH’15, who is now the Social Enter­prise Institute’s assis­tant director of programs.

Angeles is eager to return, as her pre­vious global expe­ri­en­tial learning oppor­tu­ni­ties there—in addi­tion to her stu­dent involve­ment and cur­rent work at the Social Enter­prise Insti­tute —have shaped her under­grad­uate expe­ri­ence and her career out­look. In fact, her Ful­bright work will build upon her research project, which was funded by the Office of the Provost, in which she studied two urban­ized Pales­tinian refugee camps and observed how the busi­ness and market infra­struc­tures of each com­mu­nity affected edu­ca­tional and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to youth.

She noted that Gaza refugee women in Jordan are growing busi­nesses out of neces­sity as they com­pete for the country’s resources with other migrant pop­u­la­tions, who have come to Jordan due to the Iraq War and Syrian con­flict. One project she will study closely is Sitti Soap Com­pany, a female-​​run non­profit oper­ating in the Jerash “Gaza” refugee camp, and she will also be researching other social enter­prise ini­tia­tives within refugee camps that operate and sus­tain themselves.

She hopes to better under­stand how social entre­pre­neur­ship can enhance refugee com­mu­ni­ties’ eco­nomic sit­u­a­tions and how these busi­ness models can effect polit­ical and eco­nomic change for vul­ner­able pop­u­la­tions. By the end of her Ful­bright expe­ri­ence, Angeles plans to con­sol­i­date her research into a report that can be shared with agen­cies looking to develop cost-​​effective solu­tions in response to the refugee crisis.

“I want my work to be action­able and have value for the people I’m working with,” she said. “I received a great deal of hos­pi­tality when I was there before, and I want to return that. And I think I’m well posi­tioned to do this, based on my pre­vious experience.”

Prior to working with these refugee camps, Angeles will begin her Ful­bright expe­ri­ence at the Council for British Research in the Levant Library and the Jerash Camp Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Office in Amman, where she will con­duct research on the risk fac­tors facing refugee women, as well as what pro­tec­tions are in place to sup­port them.

Angeles also hopes to make the most of her Ful­bright expe­ri­ence by reen­gaging with two social cir­cles that she con­nected with during her pre­vious travels to Jordan. One is a book club, which she hopes to rejoin after brushing up on her Arabic and Jor­danian during an intense lan­guage study at the Qasid Insti­tute. She is also excited to rejoin a choir group, Dozan wa Awtar.

“Being part of the choir was a very unique expe­ri­ence,” she recalled. “Cul­tur­ally, it helped me under­stand a part of that region’s his­tory that I oth­er­wise might not have had the oppor­tu­nity to learn about.”

Angeles noted that Ful­brighters are encour­aged to engage deeply with their host com­mu­ni­ties as a part of their expe­ri­ences abroad. She wants to con­tinue expanding her estab­lished net­works and con­nec­tions in the region so that her work on the ground can be sup­ported and fur­ther imple­mented when her Ful­bright term comes to an end.

After her Ful­bright work, Angeles plans to enroll in an MBA pro­gram, with the goal of pur­suing a career in social enterprise.