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…

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 church, and giving back to other refugees during the week. Fikiri knows that the transition…

Nahom left Eritrea with his siblings for Khartoum, Sudan to join his uncle who had fled Eritrea some time before. Next, Nahom’s family hitched a ride on a truck bound for the Sudan-Libya border. At the border, Nahom and his family boarded another truck, lying underneath a tarp that covered the truck’s bed.

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…

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 Latakia to her parents’ house in Damascus when her city was under attack. In 2012, her…

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.”