Written by Chris Opila, Refugees Thrive International Board Member
This story is the third in a three-part series about refugee children culminating on World Refugee Day, June 20, 2019. Read parts one and two.
Refugee children have become increasingly mobile, in part due to their diminishing access to education, high likelihood of child labor, and increasing risk of child marriage. Since 2015, almost 1.69 million refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea from the North African Coast to Europe. Many people make the difficult decision to take the dangerous journey because their lives in their home countries or countries of first asylum are untenable. Since 2016, more than 163,000 of these arrivals have been children, of which more than 66,300 (~40%) have arrived without any adult relatives. Since 2015, at least 14,783 individualshave died in the Mediterranean Sea, attempting to reach Europe.
Naimo, an unaccompanied refugee girl from Somalia, was one of them.
As a teenager, Naimo fled without family members from Somalia to Egypt where she settled in Cairo. She attended the Bridge Program for Unaccompanied Refugee Children at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services (StARS), a program designed to meet the unique educational and emotional needs of unaccompanied refugee children like her and prepare them to engage in meaningful activities like continuing education, volunteering, or employment after they complete it. Upon Naimo’s graduation, StARS hired her as a youth assistant for the same program. In 2015 during the peak of the informal migration across the Mediterranean Sea, Naimo attempted to cross this Sea to Europe in a boat. She did not make it. Along the way, her insulin fell into the water preventing her, a diabetic, from managing her blood sugar.
Earlier this year, StARS opened a center dedicated to serving unaccompanied refugee minors and named it after Naimo, a young teen who died trying to pursue a better life. The Naimo Center is in Cairo’s Ard Eluwa neighborhood, the home of an estimated sixty percent of Cairo’s unaccompanied refugee minor population.
In the Naimo Center, photos of Naimo decorate the walls. Unaccompanied refugee youth hang out in its common room and learn how to negotiate life in Cairo in its classrooms. Former unaccompanied refugee children staff the Naimo Center as program assistants and sit on StARS’ Youth Advisory Board, which ensures that the organization remains plugged into the actual — rather than perceived — needs of Cairo’s refugee youth. Teenage mothers use a breastfeeding room staffed with a volunteer nurse, lactation consultant, and breastfeeding support peers, and their children play in a crèche, two additions made to the Center at the behest of the Youth Advisory Board, which reported that an increasing number of unaccompanied refugee youth were teenage mothers, most of whom due to being raped by a trafficker in transit in Egypt or by a stranger after their arrival.
StARS anticipates that the Naimo Center will serve more than 3,500 unaccompanied refugee children annually. Naimo may be gone but her legacy remains, providing the next generation of unaccompanied refugee youth with the psychosocial services, legal aid, medical treatment, and education necessary to thrive in Cairo and beyond.
You can take action and ensure that some of the most vulnerable children receive the support and protection they deserve by donating to the Naimo Center via RTI. Earlier this year, RTI proudly invested $100,000 to help StARS open the doors of the Naimo Center, which offers refugee youth wide-ranging assistance, including individualized psychosocial services, legal services, medical treatment, education, direct assistance, shelter, and emergency response in times of crisis. Help us make similar impact next year.