by Mary Rowlatt
World Refugee Day was celebrated around the globe on 20th June to raise awareness about refugee issues. There are currently over 60 million displaced persons in the world, that is just shy of the population of United Kingdom.
This year in Kenya there was an entire week of events leading up to World Refugee Day, starting with a media breakfast to set the scene and bring a focus to refugee issues. The rest of the week saw events like a refugee run talent show, a business forum, a film screening with panel discussion and on the day itself a celebration at Kakuma refugee camp, near the South Sudanese border. Xavier Project were there every step of the way, to get a feel for these events you can check out the photos that we took here.
There were some great successes from World Refugee Day 2015, one of which was that #WorldRefugeeDay was number two trending on Twitter on Saturday 20th of June. The feedback from UNHCR Geneva is that it was one of the best World Refugee Day celebrations they had seen. Several Ambassadors were invited to the celebration in Kakuma Refugee Camp and their experience had a great impact. To top it off, UNHCR has since seen an increase in funding from both the US and UK.
Xavier Project were also lucky enough to have a special visit to our Tamuka Hub from the new UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Ger Duany, who was in Kenya for the celebrations. He is a South Sudanese refugee who resettled to the US in the 90s as one of the original Lost Boys of Sudan. He has since become an actor and model and has dedicated his life to telling the stories of those affected by war.
