---
url: 'https://dri.es/building-digital-backpacks-for-syrian-refugees'
title: 'Building digital backpacks for Syrian refugees'
author:
  name: 'Dries Buytaert'
  url: 'https://dri.es/about'
date: '2018-07-30T11:16:29-04:00'
license: 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/'
type: blog
summary: 'The University of California Davis is using Drupal to build Article 26 Backpack, a platform that helps Syrian Refugees document and share their educational credentials.'
tags:
  - Drupal
  - 'Drupal sites'
image: blog/digital-backpack
published: true
id: 4476
---

# Building digital backpacks for Syrian refugees

[image blog/digital-backpack resize=false]

I recently heard a heart-warming story from the [University of California, Davis](https://www.ucdavis.edu/). Last month, UC Davis used [Drupal](https://www.drupal.org/) to launch [Article 26 Backpack](https://article26backpack.ucdavis.edu/), a platform that helps Syrian Refugees document and share their educational credentials.

Over the course of the Syrian civil war, more than 12 million civilians have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands of these refugees are students, who now have to overcome the obstacle of re-entering the workforce or pursuing educational degrees away from home.

Article 26 Backpack addresses this challenge by offering refugees a secure way to share their educational credentials with admissions offices, scholarship agencies, and potentials employers. The program also includes face-to-face counseling to provide participants with academic advisory and career development.

The UC Davis team [launched their Drupal 8 application for Article 26 Backpack in four months](https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/iet-team-behind-project-help-syrian-refugees-reclaim-right-education). On the site, students can securely store their educational data, such as diplomas, transcripts and resumes. The next phase of the project will be to leverage Drupal's multilingual capabilities to offer the site in Arabic as well.

This is a great example of how organizations are using Drupal to prioritize impact. It's always inspiring to hear stories of how Drupal is changing lives for the better. Thank you to the UC Davis team for sharing their story, and continue the good work!
