“To get into the United States, I swam across the river in south Texas, in the middle of the night in my underwear, carrying a plastic bag filled with dry clothes.” This was the beginning of Olga Cantarero’s harrowing journey from Nicaragua to the United States — fearing for her life at the hands of her smugglers. Olga’s story is filled with tragedies and triumphs.
When Olga was 19, her work as a volunteer for the Red Cross was seen as subversive and, with her life at risk, she was forced to flee her native Nicaragua. She endured a dangerous journey through Mexico across the border to Texas – she walked throughout the night with no food or water, passing the bodies of women and children who had died on their journeys to freedom. She now works with immigrant and asylum-seeking girls in Texas, girls ages 13-17 who faced persecution in their home countries or suffered similar traumas during their own difficult journeys to the United States.
Read the entire blog on the Forbes.com website.
Actress and humanitarian Liv Ullmann kicked off the Women's Refugee Commission's 2012 Voices of Courage Awards luncheon at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City on May 4 with a story about a young boy she met in a refugee camp many years ago. He told her he only cried when it rained so he would not dampen the spirits of the other children. The gala honored intrepid women who are improving the lives of refugee women and girls, and featured corporate and humanitarian leaders such as PepsiCo's Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi; former CFO of JPMorgan Chase Dina Dublon; Afghanistan's award-winning Dr. Sakena Jacoobi; and young refugee women from Sudan, Congo and Nicaragua.
Read the entire blog on the Impact section of the Huffington Post website.
Jennifer Schulte, Program Officer, Youth and Livelihoods, and Elizabeth Cafferty, Senior Advocacy Officer, recently visited the Sheder and Aw Barre refugee camps in the Somali area of Ethiopia to learn more about the adolescent girls living there. This is the first in a series of blogs exploring the status of displaced adolescent girls--an extremely vulnerable population.
Sheder refugee camp is an hour and a half outside of Jijiga, the regional capital of the Somali area of Ethiopia. The road to Sheder is rocky, and along the way we passed sheep herders, camels, picturesque one-room stone houses and other homes shaped like wigwams, but constructed of what seemed to be layers of heavy cotton and tarpaulins. The camp itself is home to 11,500 refugees who have fled conflict and famine in Somalia and, with the support of the Ethiopian government and the international community, live with greater stability, but much poverty.
Journalist Brooke Hauser is the author of “The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens” — out in paperback this week. The book, which grew out of an article that Hauser wrote for The New York Times, chronicles a year in the life of five students at the International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, NY.
Dina Dublon is a pioneer in advancing women and promoting gender equity in both the corporate and nonprofit worlds. The first (and to date the only) female CFO of JP Morgan Chase, Dina Dublon is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and a member of the Board of Directors of Microsoft, PepsiCo, Accenture and the Global Fund for Women. Dina is also a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University and Chair Emerita of the Women’s Refugee Commission.
How did you become interested in the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and issues concerning refugees in general?
In 1999, my friend Maha Muna was the deputy director of WRC, and we spoke often about how aid was not being provided to refugees from the perspective of the recipients of such aid—close to 80 percent of whom are women and children. When she asked me to join her on a small mission to Rwanda with WRC to interview women in refugee settings, I jumped at the chance.
Read more: An Interview With Our 2012 Voices of Courage Honoree Dina Dublon
The daughter of Eritrean parents, Rim Tekie Solomon fled Sudan and crossed the Sinai Desert on foot with her mother and five younger siblings. When she first arrived in Israel, she lived in a detention center, taught herself Hebrew and translated for other detainees. She is now 20 years old and works as a translator with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC). Rim also volunteers with the Hagar & Miriam project, helping young asylum-seeking women who are pregnant or new mothers through an initiative called “African and Israeli Women in Friendship and Motherhood.”
“Now I know who I am and what I can do for myself. I feel I can do great things for myself, my family, my country and for women!”
“I wouldn’t have become independent in traveling alone in years of living at home as a young woman. I have learned and grown in New York City.”
“I am now more confident and straightforward. I know more and can take care of myself.”
These reflections were shared by young women from Afghanistan, Burma and Bhutan who now live in New York City, where 450 refugees were resettled and an even greater number of people were granted asylum in 2010. Like these young women, many displaced youth and their families find new freedoms and opportunities in New York, but others have trouble making their way in the overwhelming city.
Read more: New York City: A Place of Freedom and Frustration for Resettled Youth
After working as a Red Cross volunteer, Olga Cantarero fled her native Nicaragua. She endured a harrowing journey through Mexico and across the border to Texas, fearing for her life at the hands of her smugglers. She now works at the International Emergency Shelter in Los Fresnos, Texas, with juvenile immigrants who faced persecution in their home countries or suffered similar trauma during their own difficult journeys to the United States.
Read more: An Interview With Our 2012 Voices of Courage Honoree Olga CantareroOften I get asked by friends and family what I mean when I say I advocate for policy reform on behalf of unaccompanied migrant children. Usually I explain that I monitor immigration detention programs for kids and use my findings to promote better laws and procedures that reflect the children’s best interests. My friends and family are usually surprised by two things: 1) that we detain these children at all and 2) that every year more than 10,000 children and youth make the risky journey to the U.S. alone. When they ask me why these children are coming on their own, I always share the story of Jesus.*
Read more: It’s Time for a New Approach in Handling Immigrant ChildrenThe first time I traveled to the north of Uganda as the International Rescue Committee’s country director, I attended a meeting of a village saving and loans association. These are small groups whose members—primarily women—meet each week and encourage each other to save money and make very small, short-term loans to try out business ideas. The IRC has started these associations across northern Uganda as a low-cost way to provide financial services to the poor in rural communities—areas where formal banks are reluctant to invest.
Since I was new, the group had many questions for me. “Where did I come from?” America. “How many children did I have?” Three. An appreciative nod went through the crowd as big families are still valued in this part of the world and I was well on my way to having one. “Did I love Uganda?” Yes, very much. “When would I be back?” Soon, but I couldn’t say exactly when. When it came my turn to pose a question, I asked people to raise their hand if they had been displaced during the war. Almost everyone in the group raised their hands, as did most of our staff members.
This offhanded request yielded a response that really moved me and put our work in that region into context. It brought home the extent to which the crisis had gripped northern Uganda from the late 1980s until 2006.
Read the full blog on The IRC website.
Our May newsletter explores our work to help #refugee girls stay in school and become self-reliant http://t.co/hQAE5ldC
May 21, 2012 at 8:59AM Retweet this
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