This week’s edition of The SuperForest Sundae takes a look at World Refugee Day, rediscovering a childlike sense of play, and the waste that is printed phone books.
Today is World Refugee Day
In Australian media, it is very common to hear of authorities intercepting boatfuls of asylum seekers and transporting them to detention facilities. From here, they are eventually granted visas and are resettled into capital cities around the country. The focus of reports regarding refugees is generally political, as certain parties seek to sway voters towards their own agendas. The news seldom covers things such as where these people have fled from, the loved ones they’ve left behind and the hardships they have faced which left them no choice but to seek a new beginning.
Pic unrefugees.org
I think a great lack of understanding exists regarding this issue and the best way to correct this is by speaking to a refugee and asking them about their experience. The stories I’ve been lucky enough to hear have been incredibly eye-opening and revealed to me just how powerful the human will to survive.
The UN Refugee Agency has some great ideas for raising awareness of refugees and ways you can lend a hand:
- Invite a former refugee to speak at your school, church, community centre, etc. and share their experiences.
- Volunteer at a local refugee resettlement agency to help newly arrived refugees.
- Host a World Refugee Day “house party” where you might show the movie War Dance, Hotel Rwanda or another movie that shows the plight of refugees, like Beyond Borders, I Am David, or Return To Afghanistan.
- Serve a dish typical in another country or prepare an international meal with friends.
- Set up a World Refugee Day discussion at your home, place of worship, or community centre.
- Wear light blue (the international color of UN Aid workers) on World Refugee Day (June 20) and talk to friends about why you are wearing blue that day.
- Invite 10 or more of your friends to subscribe to UNHCR Insider Update, a weekly email newsletter about refugee issues around the world.
To rediscover play is to rediscover ourselves and our full capacity for happiness. One could even call play a form of enlightenment that gives birth to the loftiest potential within ourselves. To let playfulness slip away is one of the biggest blows to our prospects for happiness. Rather than set out to achieve happiness, many of us would do better by relearning how to make life into a form of play.”
April
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