On July 8, 2017, students from the San Diego Branch of AYLUS met with refugee children from Ethiopia, Somalia, and the border between Cambodia and Thailand and showed the refugee children how to make paper planes, crowns, and bottle rockets. The children had such a great time with the San Diego students that they wanted to play with them all day.
San Diego resettles more refugees than any other region of the US, about 3,000 per year. For many of us, the thought of fleeing home and starting life over in a completely different culture where we don’t know the language is unthinkable. Yet, families granted access to the U.S. as refugees are grateful for the opportunity to begin a new life in this country. For many, it means hope after years of despair. However, refugees and immigrants of many types enter the United States with hope for a new life, but lack knowledge of the legal, monetary, social, educational, and transportation systems that are the basic building blocks of life here.
Hopefully, what the San Diego students did would bring some joy and hope to children of refugees living in San Diego.
The students who led the events are Stephen Yang, Christopher Yang, Mike Bai, Jeffrey Guo, Nathan Guo, Eric Li, Andrew Peng, Jessica Trost, Joshua Trost, Leon Wang, Richard Wu, and Amanda Zhang.
