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Rose Cardarelli: Fellow Spotlight

Dr. Rose Cardarelli was a member of the Whole Child Development for Displaced Learners Network which ran until March 2023. She is the founder and president of the Education for All Coalition, a soon-to-be author, and life-long service leader. Based in Washington, DC, she agreed to meet me at Salzburg Global’s DC office to discuss her work and the journey that led her to becoming a champion of education for displaced children. 

Rose grew up in Massachusetts in a family that highly valued education. A good student with a strong sense of adventure, Rose enlisted in the Army after high school in the hopes of seeing the world.

After a few years of adventure, she decided that she not only wanted to serve, but also wanted to lead. She returned to Massachusetts to attend Fitchburg State University, where she joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and graduated as an Army Medical Service Corps Officer. She spent the next years running hospitals, commanding thousand-person battalions and brigades, serving on missions like the Chernobyl Medical Task Force, taking care of wounded warriors from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and traveling the world. 

After retiring from the Army, Rose worked as an operations director and professor of human security at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University. It was there that her interest in refugees and displaced individuals took hold. While conducting security programs in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa and serving as a congressional liaison on human security issues, the ramifications of inconsistent educational opportunities amongst displaced individuals become increasingly evident and an issue she could no longer ignore.

She recalled: “I could see that there were now generations of children growing up as adults that really lost some of the basics. They had not received an education, they in turn could not be employed in professions that would help their countries or families in any way, and that there were large populations of young people that were angry.”

Although larger organizations provided basic education services en masse to refugees, there were gaps in areas like social-emotional learning, trauma response and environmental well-being. Seeing an opportunity to fill those gaps, Rose left academia and started the Education for All Coalition (EFAC) in 2018. She recalls: “I thought the best thing I could do was create an NGO that could fill those gaps and connect resources and opportunities to these children”. The organization, which offers curriculum/workbooks, classroom toolkits and teacher trainings in over six countries, focuses on four practice areas: social-emotional learning, trauma-responsive training, literacy and early childhood development, and climate resilience.

Elaborating on the rationale behind the practice areas, Rose says: “Although children are having to be displaced because of war, conflict and crisis, the elephant in the room is climate”. Teaching children about the environment helps them connect with their new or changing environment and develop a positive relationship with the world around them. She added: “Whether it be sea levels rising and islands disappearing, whether it be drought, it’s all related to food security, water security, health security, and ultimately psycho-social well-being.”

Despite the daunting reality of climate change that will continue to displace people in large numbers across the globe, Rose is hopeful about the future of education for displaced children. Speaking about the progress made since EFAC’s founding, she explained: “When I started this organization, there were silos - there were the big operators and small operators, and nobody was talking to each other. Now people are talking to each other and working collaboratively and sharing resources…So I see progress, I have hope.” 

For the next few months, Rose is taking a break from her work to complete a book on climate change as a humanitarian crisis. The book investigates the intersection of children, migration, social-emotional learning, climate and well-being. She explains that it is a book of best practices for not only government stakeholders, but also individuals experiencing forced migration. 

At the end of our interview, I asked Rose what makes her proud, and what advice she has for rising leaders. To the former, she responded “service”. Regarding leadership, she said: “to be a leader you have to be a follower. You have to be able to listen, understand, assimilate, you have to be able to understand who you’re leading.” Finally, she added: “you can become intimidated in this world, you can become afraid... You can’t if you’re a good leader. You have to be brave enough to confront challenges”.

Since its founding, EFAC has engaged in Yemen, Ukraine, Greece, Mexico, Lebanon, Malawi and in various countries in Southeast Asia. EFAC’s organizational partners include UN-DGC, UNHCR-GRF, UNESCO, UNICEF, The Committee on Teaching about the UN (CTAUN), USAID, Childhood Education International, Rotary International, mEducation Alliance, Kappa Delta Pi – the International Honor Society in Education, and more.