Ali’s Story
Photo Credit: Taryn Schultz Like many refugees, Ali Mohammed has never known a life without war. His homeland, Sudan, was at war when he was born and is at war still. If you’ve met Ali here at Refuge, you know he has an easy smile, that he speaks softly and articulately, and that he makes […]
How to Engage
Furaha, Leon’s wife, at the baby shower. When I have a meeting with someone at Refuge for the first time, I often warn them that we may get interrupted. There’s a tragic version of interruption, and most refugees know that too well. Many of them had interrupted educations, interrupted careers, interrupted livelihoods, family members whose […]
Play
Photo Credit: Joe Gonzales I confess that I love to play. And I really love it when I can give people some hope that they can play, too. Hope that they can live freely enough to quit being in control for long enough to breathe. I know this is not the only thing people need, […]
Somayyah’s Story
Somayyah shows me the mug she found in the gift shop at The King Center in downtown Atlanta: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” ~ Martin Luther King […]
The Minimum that Becomes the Maximum
Photo Credit: Tom Griscom Someone once called Refuge out for doing “the bare minimum.” To be honest, my first thought was, “Heck, yes, we do the bare minimum.” I know that phrase denotes doing the least possible, but what if the most we can do is never enough? Sometimes what needs to be done in […]
Ahmad, Dreaming
I remember how I used to dream… As a young pharmacist in Damascus, I dreamed of starting a family, of establishing my own home, of a full life. And then the war changed all of that. The violent interruption of our ability to dream is one of the hardest things about being a refugee. […]
