June is the month we honor World Refugee Day. It marks an important occasion to pause, think about contemporary conversations about refugees, and reflect on how the dominant narrative about refugees is making it hard to clearly understand the true crisis.
Read MoreRead along as Board President, Cara Kiggins, recollects her experiences of visiting St. Andrew’s Refugee Services (StARS) in Cairo, Egypt and offers a tour of its innovative Naimo Center. She reflects on the sense of joy, belonging, and community that these spaces provide for the hundreds of refugees that pass through their doors each and every day.
Read MoreThis holiday season, due to popular demand, we’ve compiled a second gift guide to help you find special gifts for your loved ones that are created by, with, or in support of refugees. We hope this guide will inspire those of you looking for the perfect gift and alleviate stress for those doing last minute shopping!
Read MoreIn 2019, StARS opened the Naimo Center as a refuge for unaccompanied children in memory of Naimo, a young refugee from Somalia. Naimo fled alone from Somalia to Cairo, where she attended the Bridge Program for Unaccompanied Refugee Children at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services (StARS) and was subsequently hired by StARS as a youth assistant. Sadly, she perished while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015. Naimo leaves behind a powerful legacy honored daily at the Naimo Center.
Read MoreOf the over 25.4 million refugees worldwide, the vast majority of them are children. Instead of a childhood many of these children instead find themselves the victims of child labor, married as child brides, and/or robbed of their right to an education. St. Andrew’s Refugee Services, through its Naimo Center, is working to change this.
Read MoreThere are nearly 4,000 unaccompanied children registered with the United Nations in Egypt. They have escaped ungoverned militarized clans in Somalia, Janjaweed raids in Darfur, and political imprisonment in Ethiopia. Mariam is but one of them. At 16, Mariam had to navigate a foreign country alone: looking for a job, trying to find a home, and searching for food to put on the table. However, thanks to the Naimo Center at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services, she and other unaccompanied refugee youth like here do not do so alone.
Read MoreDeveloping countries host 86% of the world’s 19.5 million refugees, yet they have the fewest resources available. The StARS-Refugees Thrive International partnership not only provides refugees with critical, life-saving services but also offers them a community, a new life, and a home. Read reflections of staff members at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services (StARS) on the importance of StARS.
Read MoreThe resilience of refugees, their plight, and their journeys can be celebrated not just on World Refugee Day, but each and every day of the year. You can support refugees by contacting your representative, hosting a dinner, or by purchasing products created or in support of refugees. Get involved with advocacy in your community to help change the narrative and amplify the voices of refugees.
Read MoreRefugee aid can be more than “effective.” It can transform individual lives, and through them, entire communities. For Risaa, a young refugee in St. Andrew’s Refugee Services’s (StARS) award-winning youth program, StARS programming provides more than education, legal assistance, medical care, and psychosocial treatment. StARS provides a sense of hope for the future, community, and belonging; StARS provides a home.
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