Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Although there are between 400-700 refugees resettled to Lansing, Michigan each year, there are few resources for college-age refugees. Most of the services and agencies that cater to refugees’ needs instead focus on children and families. This leaves these young people resettled halfway around the world in a strange place and a vulnerable position — with no family or friends to support them. Luckily, in Lansing other young people have stepped forward to help these refugees. An article in The State News explains:
…[Kaba, a 24-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo] never met his real family. As a child in Uganda, he was taken in by a Guinean man and raised in the Congo. Kaba’s adopted father raised him as his own, and Kaba came to know the man’s four children as brothers and sisters. In 2004, conflict arose in the Congo, causing Kaba and his family to flee back to Uganda. But before they could escape, Kaba’s father was killed.
Kaba said his father was the most important person in his life, and he was devastated by the loss. But there was little time to mourn his loss.
“We arrived in Uganda in 2005 in August, and in October I went (away) to work for six months,” Kaba said. “When I came back around (March 2006), I didn’t find (my family) at home. They were swift, they moved and they didn’t tell me where they went.”
For the next two years, Kaba remained in a refugee camp until he was selected for resettlement by U.N. officials in 2008 and was flown to Lansing….
…many refugees, such as Kaba, are resettled halfway around the world in a strange place with no family or friends to support them.
Suddenly, these young people have to learn how to live on their own, provide for themselves and to interact with people who speak another language, [Community relations and marketing director for St. Vincent Catholic Charities Julie Picot] said. Tasks that might seem simple, such as riding the bus or shopping at Meijer,
can be incredibly difficult to learn, she said.But harder still is healing the mental and emotional wounds that have been inflicted upon these refugees before their arrival, she said…
But for refugees such as Kaba, beyond those essentials lies a desire for something more, something many refugees in his situation struggle to find —companionship.
Finding a friend
With between 400-700 refugees coming to Lansing each year, there are many services and agencies that cater to their needs, but the focus for most of those groups is centered on children and families, MSU alumnus Ken Chester said.
But there are few resources for college-age refugees,
Chester said.Because of this shortcoming, Chester founded Refugee/Immigrant Young-Adult Neighbor, or RYAN, in 2008 based on the work he did as a student at MSU and a member of IVAC.
After working with a young refugee during an IVAC project in 2007, Chester realized this segment of the refugee population was being isolated from the rest of the community.
“The thing that really touched me was when he said, ‘You’re my only friend in the community,’” Chester said… Read more here
