The MELLIE Project
The MELLIE (Migrant English Language Literacy and Intercultural Education) project is an extra-curricular project designed to facilitate language and cultural exchange between DCU volunteer staff and students and asylum seekers and refugees living in Direct Provision. It enables participants to engage experientially and constructively, through storytelling, with the global challenges of migration and reception, hallmarks of the DCU sanctuary initiative.
Once a week over the course of a twelve week semester, refugees and people seeking asylum travel to DCU for a two-hour storytelling session with a member of the DCU community.
Dr Julie Daniel’s (School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies) PhD thesis examined language acquisition in a non-formal context, through collaborative storytelling, in order to promote multiliteracies and integration of asylum seekers and refugees into Irish society. It drew on the MELLIE project, a DCU University of Sanctuary initiative which pairs Irish volunteer tutors from the DCU community, after appropriate training, with asylum seekers and refugees who resided in Mosney Direct Provision Centre.