Blog

University and college campuses are often lively centers of positive community action. That’s why when Their Story is Our Story (TSOS) was invited to present our Displacement Today lecture series at The College of Wooster in Ohio, we jumped at the chance to connect with their faculty and students.

On June 24, 2023, TSOS had the opportunity to join with NoVA Friends of Refugees and other organizations at the One Journey Festival, a celebration of unity, diversity, and refugee contributions and talent. It was so fun.

Like many of my peers, I discovered in my sixties that volunteering for causes I care about fills me with purpose and joy. So, when I heard that my small southern city was taking in more than 150 Afghan refugees, I signed up to help. As a white, middle-income, semi-retired woman, I’m a cliche among new refugee sponsors, motivated by the best of intentions, but not always the best awareness of all that sponsorship entails.

What would you do if there were no books readily available in your language? Although Somali is the second most spoken language among students in the Seattle Public School system, books in the Somali language have been hard to come by. That is, until Farhiya Mohamed, founder and director of the Seattle-based Somali Family Safety Task Force, had a brilliant idea—to make her own books in the Somali language.

In the breathtakingly beautiful surroundings of Oaxaca, Mexico, I began this year attending a culturally rich, sensitive, and stimulating immigration advocacy training. Sponsored by Ollin Tlahtoalli, a Spanish and Culture Center, and the nonprofit MANOS: Migrantes Apoyados, No Olvidados, the dynamic training packs a lot into two intense weeks, focusing on enhancing intercultural awareness through learning opportunities with community leaders, human rights defenders, lawyers, and language teachers. I made a connection to the place called Oaxaca, to people who call Oaxaca home, and to fellow immigration advocates in the U.S.

When describing the work I do here at TSOS, I often say, we try to help people “step into each other’s stories.” Lately, I’ve been doing more of that myself.

Their Story is Our Story (TSOS) was pleased to present at the 2023 Idaho Conference on Refugees held at Boise State University on February 22-23. In alignment with the conference theme Creating Connections, our TSOS team addressed three significant invisible barriers that we consistently encounter in our work and invited audience members to think about how local community members might leverage their inter- and intra- connections to help Forcibly Displaced Persons overcome invisible barriers so they might achieve an equal footing in society.

Their Story is Our Story was invited to participate in “Welcoming Kansas City” to collaborate with and support groups ranging from Arabic communities to groups dedicated to supporting women who have been sexually abused or involved in human trafficking

It is especially important to provide accurate information as to how a photo will be used and obtain consent when working with refugees.

Sarah Kippen Wood, Former Executive Director of Their Story is Our Story (TSOS), shares how stories connect and lead to change in an interview with Darien Laird, our Director of External Media. Sarah gives us an inside look at how TSOS functions and shares how telling her story helped her fight a stage four cancer diagnosis.