Day 176: Welcomed A Refugee Family
I am sitting in the airport getting ready to board a plane home to Chicago to see my wife and daughter. It has been a blast getting the opportunity to once again spend time in New York City. Although I already knew it, this trip really opened my eyes to what New York is: one of the world's biggest melting pots. A place where you can hear over 800 different languages and, if you spent the time, could meet someone from every country on the planet. People from around the world have come to New York City to start their life anew, and hope to prosper from the American Dream. So many, however, have come to New York City, as well as many other cities throughout America, to free themselves from persecution, war, and terror. These refugees want nothing more for themselves and their families than to live a life of safety and happiness while attaining a peace of mind they couldn't achieve in their homeland. Recently, World Refugee Day was celebrated across the globe in order to raise awareness from the issues plaguing refugees (and potential refugees) throughout the world. The on-going theme for World Refugee Day is to "Do One Thing." One thing to help welcome refugee families to your community to help them escape from the terrible situations that they are coming from. A group in Chicago, RefugeeOne, has made it their mission to help resettle refugees and, through different programs, help each refugee to become "an independent, self-supporting member of the new community as soon as possible." To celebrate this year's World Refugee Day, RefugeeOne is holding a drive in order to collect household goods needed to establish a home for 10 families. So today, for my random act of kindness, I am helping to welcome a family by donating a set of mixing bowls to their home. Since I couldn't be at the drive in person, I utilized RefugeeOne's donation portal to make my donation. I have to wrap up now because they are calling for my boarding group. Lindsey and Isla, I will be home very soon!
I recently read a book called 'the other hand' by Chris Cleave about a refugee called Little Bee who has run away from a immagration dentention centre to London to escape 'the men' in her country who brutally tortured and killed her sister and it gave me a new perspective on the immagrants and refugees in this country and I feel more sympathetic towards them. We don't know their story or they horrors they are running away from and I don't think any of us could properly comprehend it. I don't think we have a right to say who can live in this country and who can't. We are all part of one world and one nation aren't we!
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