John Rudoff

Finally A Place to Call Home

Every time someone asks May Lui Tike where she’s from, she answers: “I am not from anywhere.”  She has a good reason for this response:  

John Rudoff

A Key To The American Dream

“I was pregnant when the U.S. invaded,” recalls Murooj Alshawi. “When I heard the bombs, I started shaking and didn’t even feel my daughter in my stomach.  

Sankar Raman

There is still work to do

Divine Irambona loves to challenge herself. Maybe because her life was a struggle from the moment she was born. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to

Sankar Raman

Say Goodbye to All Your Problems

It’s 2010 and Johana Amani is 10 years old. She is speeding through the Congo in the middle of the night on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle. She and […]

John Rudoff

The Elusive Feeling of Safety

It was dark when they left. They walked and walked, women, children, parents, elders, through the woods, up hills, until his feet hurt and his grandfather had to scoop

John Rudoff

Tears for the Country He Left

In a small town in the northwest part of Cambodia called Chongkal, the 5-year-old boy could not cry. His father had been taken by Khmer Rouge soldiers, bound for  

Sankar Raman

There Is a Hopeful Tomorrow

Things were going well for Jenny Munezero in Portland, Oregon. She was working in a rewarding career and engaged to a man she adored.

Amani

Turning Pain Into Ambition

Lisa Amani is a driven 18-year-old. This fall, she will start her first year at University of Oregon, with $130,000 worth of scholarships.

Sankar Raman

Tending a Garden and Her Dreams

Salsabel Al Masri’s garden was the center of her world. She and her five brothers spent every day after school chasing each other among the olive, orange, apple,

Sankar Raman

Finding Courage in the Unfamiliar

When Japhety Ngabireyimana landed in the United States at age nine, he thought he was seeing ghosts. “I was surrounded by a bunch of white people at the airport,”

Kim Oanh Nguyen

A Career Wrapped in Banana Leaves

The first thing to know about Phet Schwader is that his first name is pronounced “Pet.” Unless it marks the start of a word, the letter “H” is typically

Desert to Oregon, a Paintbrush in Hand

Hussein Al-Baiaty was born in Iraq during the first Gulf War. To escape the dangerous living conditions, he and his family fled to a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia.

In the Land of the Free

One of Mariamou’s Abdoulye’s earliest memories of growing up in the Central African Republic: being chased by someone with a machete.

Determination Born in a Refugee Camp

During the 1990s, Bhutan’s policy of “One Nation, One People,” forced Nabin Dhimal, who was just a young child at the time, to leave his home with his family and […]

Woman Without a Country

As the daughter of an Iraqi, Eman Abbas and her family faced severe discrimination in her home country of Kuwait during the 1980s when the country enacted