Four Ways to Make a Difference on World Refugee Day

Written by Megan Carson
Today is the official World Refugee Day. There are events scheduled in many areas all throughout the week, with major events in major cities all around the world planned for Saturday, June 23rd.
If you’ve been wondering what you can do to participate in World Refugee Day, here are some suggestions:
1. Do a search for World Refugee Day events in your area, then show up! If you live in or near Salt Lake City, UT, or Oakland, CA, come find our TSOS Booths at each of those locations!
Here is a flier about an event in Salt Lake City TODAY:
Finding Home Screening
Here’s a flier about the event in SLC on Saturday:

Here’s a flier about the World Refugee Day event in Oakland.


2. Take a photo with a sign that expresses your support of refugees and then change your Profile Photo and come back and share it with us in the comments on Facebook.
Take your pick for your poster caption: Their Story Is Our Story, Their Story Is My Story, Welcome Refugees, Pray for Refugees, What If It Were You?, or be creative and come up with something original! We can’t wait to see your photos! Use the hashtag - #TSOSRefugees.
3. Update your Social Media Profile Photo with this TSOS Frame. You can find it on our Facebook Page.
4. Turn your talents into a fundraiser! Our friends at Talent Pledge have made it super easy to be pro-active in a fun and meaningful way. You can pick your cause to donate to and you can pick your talent to share with your friends to donate to your cause.
If you’d like to choose TSOS, just go HERE to their Choose Your Cause page, then scroll down to the bottom, and in the SEARCH BAR, type in “Their Story Is Our Story” and Bam! We’re all set!
WHAT WILL YOU DO?
We often hear the phrase, “Go big or go home!” But, maybe it doesn’t matter so much if we go big or go small, just as long as we GO. So, pick something that works for you, find some way to do good in the world, and go out there and make it happen!
Partner Profile: No One Left Behind
Their Story is Our Story and No One Left Behind (NOLB) joined forces in 2025 to launch the StoryShield program.
We spoke with Matthew Marcellus, Director of Communications with NOLB, and asked what the partnership with TSOS has meant for his organization and their Afghan clients.
Context with Layma
Social media presents us with an endless scroll of headlines and ‘hot takes’. What’s often missing is context. What is the history that led up to an event? Whose interests are served by a certain policy? What effects is that policy having on people’s lives? Layma Murtaza produces and hosts the video series “Context with Layma”, featured on Their Story is Our Story’s social media channels. We spoke to her about the context of her own life, as an Afghan-American and a professional in humanitarian aid, that led her to use storytelling to illuminate the personal and political context behind the headlines.
De-skilling and the Mental Health Effects Among Refugee Physicians
Discussions of physician workforce policy tend to organize themselves around numbers. Shortage projections, residency slot allocations, and licensing timelines dominate the literature, and for understandable reasons. More than 83 million people in the United States currently live in areas without sufficient access to a primary care physician, and projections suggest the country could face a shortage of as many as 120,000 physicians by 2030.

