Helene was only two years old when her parents and five-year-old brother fled violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2002. She grew up in a town called Bujumbura in Burundi. Although Helene and her family did not live in a refugee camp, they still faced many struggles living in a country that […]

Tesfai was born to a family of farmers in a village called Bietgebriel in Eritrea in 1987. He came from an ordinary family with parents who wanted nothing more than a good education and opportunity for their five children. Sadly, Tesfai’s father passed away when he was 13 years old, but he worked hard in […]

Mohamed vividly remembers the moment he landed at the John F Kennedy Airport in New York City. It was a cold, crisp winter afternoon in December of 2010. He was nineteen years old. The beautiful landscapes of America that he had so long heard of and imagined were covered by white snow, and three jackets weren’t enough to prevent him from shivering. “Everything was foreign—I remember trying to speak a…

Heba’s parents fled violence in Somalia before she was born. She was raised in Kuwait along with her two brothers and sister who were educated and worked in Kuwait before coming to the United States. Heba studied to become a nurse. Yet, like many stateless people, Heba’s family worried that at any moment, their host […]

When Esmael Borhani arrived in the United States in February 2020 with his wife, Anisa, and their two young children, they were unprepared for the frigid temperatures and heavy snow that greeted them. They owned only lightweight clothing after nearly five years spent as refugees in Sri Lanka, waiting to be resettled after fleeing war […]

Mohammed Alhamwi never thought he would have to flee his home. His family ran a prosperous business making purses in Damascus, Syria, and he was a typical 18-year-old. He had a job, a car, and a plan to earn a certificate in technology and open his own cell phone business. All of that was upended […]

Marcel fled his home in Abidgan, Ivory Coast in 2011 due to a military conflict that led to a civil war. He spent eight years in Avi Pozo Refugee Camp in Lomé, Togo with his daughter and two grandkids, ages 12 and 15 years old. “Before the war, there was peace. There was joy. We […]

Meet Claudia Cilien Pierre. Claudia is 35 years old, and she is originally from Haiti. She lives in Lawrence Township with her husband John Ptensly, and two kids ages 3 and 2 years old. She studied in Haiti and received a science degree. “I sometimes used to go to university hungry. It wasn’t easy.” Now, […]

Baydaa and her husband lived in Falujar, Iraq. Baydaa owned her own salon and her husband Haitham was an accountant. “I had a family, and I used to work. We had everything we needed.” That all changed when violence occurred in Falujar that lead to an ongoing war in Iraq. “We went 120 days without […]

Fikiri is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You may recognize his story from the IndyStar. Since Christmas, Fikiri has been extremely busy. As a single father, he is raising his three children, while working the night shift on the weekends so he can be actively involved in his children’s lives, his […]

Agappe was born and raised in the town of Masisi, in southern end of the Nord-Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo until 2008, when fighting broke out in Nord-Kivu. His mother led her family out of the warzone on a bus to Kampala, Uganda. They stayed in a refugee camp on the edge of the city for a few months before continuing onward to Nairobi, Kenya. Agappe’s…

Nduwimana Sada Nahayo lived all her life in North Kivu, a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most violent areas during the Second Congo War and the Kivu Conflict. Sada doesn’t like to talk about or even remember the trauma she experienced and witnessed back in her country. “Innocent people die every day without knowing what’s going on.”

Riem is from Latakia, a major port city in Syria, and one of the last cities largely under government control at the time she lived there. “Since 2011, I had two suitcases packed, and if anything happened, I would take them and leave with my kids,” Riem said. At first, she would travel back and forth from […]