There’s a legend in China that the udumbara flower blossoms only once every 3,000 years.[Sanpu He, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“I saw two bunches of small white flowers on the window and iron bar. The flowers were very small and had long branches.”

In Buddhism, the flower symbolizes a blessing from the heavens. But for Sanpu He it symbolized light at the end of what seemed like an endless tunnel. Sanpu had been sent to a forced labor camp.

[Sanpu He, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“Five or six high voltage electric clubs were used to shock me on my head, back of the ears, face, neck and other body parts for a long time, when the electric clubs ran out of battery, they changed to new ones.”

His crime, according to the Chinese Communist Party, is his belief in Falun Gong, a meditation practice with core values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

[Sanpu He, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“We follow truth, compassion and tolerance, become a good person, the best person. When we understand these principles, our mind will be calm.”

But this calm wasn’t going to last long. China’s authoritarian regime felt threatened by Falun Gong’s increasing popularity. In 1999, the regime launched a brutal campaign of persecution, sending thousands of people like Sanpu to prisons and labor camps.

Sanpu and his family eventually fled China. They’re now some six-and-a-half thousand miles from their homeland-settled in Auckland, New Zealand. They cannot return to the country of their ancestry; any fond memories they had have now faded to scars.

But compared to many, their story still has a happy ending. Huang Guohua was not as lucky. He and his daughter Huang Ying have lost the most important woman in their lives forever.

[Huang Guohua, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“For a child who lost her mum when she was only one year old, the harm for her whole life can never be made up.”

So what does little Ying wish for?

[Huang Ying, Guohua’s Daughter]:
“To have my Mum back.”

At only 29 years old, Guohua’s wife, Luo Zhi Xiang, also a Falun Gong practitioner, was tortured to death in a Chinese prison. At that time she was three months pregnant with their second child. Today Guohua brings up little Ying alone in New Zealand, a country he knows little about. But his eternal love for his wife and hope for his motherland remain.

[Huang Guohua, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“All practitioners will have a free and lawful environment to practice Falun Gong in China. I believe this will happen, but I will never get my wife back.”

The Huang family and the He family now find peace together at this Falun Gong practice site in Auckland. Their children play together and they’re managing to settle in, getting jobs and learning English.

Both men also spend much of their spare time raising awareness about the persecution that’s still ongoing in China. But despite the conditions there at present, they still have hope for China’s future.

Falun Gong practitioners have been reporting many sightings of the udumbara flower, which symbolizes good fortune is on its way.

Source: NTD News

By Gina Shakespeare, Auckland, New Zealand.

Refugee students attend an English class at one of the camps in eastern Nepal. (Source: UNHCR)

BELDANGI II CAMP, Nepal, October 21 (UNHCR) - At an age when most people are enjoying retirement, Jay has started going to school to prepare for his future. The 64-year-old is among the more than 9,000 refugees from Bhutan who have attended spoken English classes funded by UNHCR and implemented by Caritas Nepal in seven refugee camps in eastern Nepal.

The classes are held to help ensure the best possible start for people who have opted for resettlement in a third country because they are unable, or unwilling, to remain in Nepal. That said, the classes are open to anyone aged 25 or over, regardless of whether or not they want to be resettled.

Most of the students are illiterate or semi-literate and are attending school for the first time. ”I never imagined that I would be able to speak English,” says former farmer Jay, siiting outside his small home of mud and thatch in Beldangi II camp. He had never been to school in his life before enrolling in the English classes.

“After attending the classes, I realized that if a person is determined, they learn anything regardless of their age,” he said. “I have also gained confidence and am now able to initiate a conversation with strangers, including foreigners, without fear,” added Jay, who arrived in Nepal in 1992 and heads a family of 13 people. They will all be starting a new life in the United States after years of what Jay describes as enforced idleness in Beldangi.

Januka, 51, is one of Jay’s classmates. She can’t write in Nepali, but is really getting to grips with spoken and written English after studying the language for the past three-and-a-half months.

“I’m able to count and calculate in English, which will help me when doing the accounts here and in a resettlement country,” she said. Januka is the family housekeeper, but her new skills make her feel even more useful.

The English classes were launched in April 2008, a few months after Nepal said it would allow the refugees originating from Bhutan to apply for resettlement in a third country. The United States said it was ready to accept some 60,000 of the refugees, most of whom arrived in Nepal in the early 1990s.

To date, about 22,000 have left the camps in Nepal and started new lives overseas. That includes about 19,000 in the United States, more than 900 in Australia, some 870 in Canada, 310 in Norway, 305 in Denmark, almost 300 in New Zealand amd more than 120 in the Netherlands.

“These classes are run to enable illiterate and semi-literate refugees to conduct a basic conversation in English,” said Rianawati Rianawati, head of UNHCR’s sub-office in the eastern Nepal town of Damak. “These [language] skills will hopefully help them integrate in their resettlement country.” Rianawati said the classes had also helped build confidence among the elderly and the illiterate because they could now express themselves in English.

Chhoki Dolma Tamang, who coordinates the classes in the camps for Caritas, said marginalized and vulnerable people were particularly encouraged to join the classes because they stood to benefit the most. “We go from hut to hut looking for these people and encourage them to join the English classes,” she said.

Most of the learners have expressed interest in resettement, but there are a few who still dream of going back to Bhutan. ”Knowing English will be helpful regardless of where we are,” Jay noted.

It’s certainly proving useful for those who have already been resettled, such as 43-year-old Kumari, who left for the United States last July along with seven family members.

“I am happy that I learnt English before I came to Fort Worth in Texas. With my basic English, it was easy to communicate with people,” said Kumari, reached by telephone. She’s optimistic about finding a job and earning a regular wage after years of being dependent on others.

Source: UNHCR
By Bimal Babu Khatri in Beldangi II Camp, Nepal

Hodan gets ready to board a bus that will take her to Addis Ababa from Kebribeyah Refugee Camp. © UNHCR/K.G.Egziabher

KEBRIBEYAH REFUGEE CAMP, Ethiopia, October 1 (UNHCR) - Hodan Mawlid has spent almost all of her life in a baking, dusty refugee camp in Ethiopia, yet the 18-year-old remains remarkably optimistic despite suffering the loss of her parents at an early age and the hardship that followed.

“I have led a very painful life,” she told a UNHCR visitor here recently. “But I always find solace in my belief that the best way to prevail over the cruelties and ills of the past is to forget them altogether and start all over again.”

Now, things are changing for Hodan: last month she flew to the United States after being accepted for resettlement and her positive attitude should help her face the challenges that will arise in an alien land and culture. “Just how smooth the new beginning is depends so much on the individual and the situation,” said UNHCR Senior Resettlement Officer Larry Yungk. “I think there tend to be opportunities out there, but there is no guarantee of success,” he adds.

Hodan was among a group of 23 vulnerable Somali refugees, including her uncle and his family, who were accepted by the US under a UNHCR-organized resettlement programme and flown to Denver, Colorado. They cannot return home because they originate from volatile southern or central areas of Somalia, where people continue to flee their homes to escape conflict.

Before leaving Addis Ababa, she said she knew there were tough times ahead, especially to begin with as she struggles to learn English. But she’s had a lifetime of preparation. “I’ve known suffering all my life. Compared to what I’ve endured, language and cultural barriers will be nothing to worry about.”

Hodan was born and brought up in eastern Ethiopia’s Kebribeyah Refugee Camp after her parents crossed from neighbouring Somalia in 1991, fleeing the chaos that followed the collapse of the Siad Barre regime. They were among more than 600,000 people who fled to Ethiopia and found safety in eight refugee camps.

“When I grew old enough to enquire about my parents, I learnt from my uncle, who took care of me while in the camp, that my mother had died as a refugee when I was four years old and that my father returned to Somalia some months later,” she recalled.

The news was a devastating blow, especially as Hodan had no siblings who could comfort her. Her uncle and aunt and their children became her surrogate parents and siblings, but she had to drop out of school after Grade Four to supplement the family’s monthly food ration by working as a housemaid in a nearby town.

Meanwhile, relative stability in Somaliland and northern Somalia’s Puntland led to the repatriation of well over half-a-million Somali refugees from Ethiopia between 1997 and 2005. But Hodan’s kin were from southern Somalia where continuing insecurity has prevented their return. Resettlement became an option.

The Somalis still living in camps in eastern Ethiopia, including Hodan and her relatives, were caught in a protracted refugee situation with no end in sight. As part of the efforts to resolve the problem, the US government agreed in 2007 to accept thousands of these Somalis for resettlement. To date, UNHCR has referred the names of some 5,600 for possible resettlement.

“While UNHCR’s primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees, our ultimate goal is to help find durable solutions that will allow them to rebuild their lives in dignity and peace,” explained Moses Okello, UNHCR’s representative in Ethiopia.

The Somali community in the United States is closely-knit, UNHCR’s Yungk noted, adding that this could help the young Hodan settle in well. Her biggest hurdle could be education.

“Unfortunately, if one is over 18 and arrives in the US, one is generally not eligible to finish public schooling,” Yungk said, while adding that refugees like Hodan were usually steered towards General Equivalency Degree programmes, English-language courses and vocational training.

Hodan welcomed the opportunity for a new life with plenty of opportunity. There is no looking back for her. “I do not think I have any incentive to go to Somalia any time in the future,” she concluded.

Source: UNHCR

By Kisut Gebre Egziabher in Kebribeyah Refugee Camp, Ethiopia

A Bhutanese refugee shopkeeper looks out from his shop in a camp in eastern Nepal

BELDANGI REFUGEE CAMP, Nepal - Chandrakhar Adhikari does not know whether he will ever see his two brothers again.

Earlier this year, the pair left the refugee camp in Nepal where the family had lived for 17 years for a new life in Kentucky, reluctantly leaving 29-year-old Adhikari behind because he refused to go with them.

Thousands of Bhutanese refugees are now leaving the camps in eastern Nepal, where they have languished for almost two decades, under a United Nations resettlement programme.

But a significant minority say they do not want to leave, forcing families to choose between staying with their loved ones and the promise of a new life in the West.

“Bhutan runs in my veins, it is in my blood,” Adhikari told AFP in his tiny bamboo hut in the Beldangi camp, home to 40,000 refugees who fled their homes when ethnic tensions flared in Bhutan in the early 1990s.

“I can still remember my village and my neighbours, and I want one day to return to Bhutan. This refugee problem needs to be resolved, and it will not be resolved if we resettle.”

Bhutanese refugees attend a marriage ceremony in a Refugee Camp in eastern Nepal

Around 100,000 ethnic Nepali refugees fled Bhutan, claiming ethnic and political persecution, after the Buddhist kingdom made national dress compulsory and banned the Nepalese language.

Bhutan’s government says the people who left were either illegal immigrants or went voluntarily. The refugees, who have no right to work or own land in Nepal, insist they are Bhutanese citizens.

Numerous rounds of high-level talks between Nepal and Bhutan have failed to reach an agreement on repatriation.
Adhikari says his brothers are enjoying their new life, although they have to work much harder than in Nepal, where refugees cannot legally seek employment and have food and education provided for them.

“They could not even celebrate Dashain (a Hindu festival) this year because their American employers did not give them time off. Their children will grow up not knowing their own culture,” he said.

Since the resettlement programme was launched in 2007, around 21,000 refugees have left the camps near Nepal’s eastern border with India to begin new lives in countries including the United States, Australia and Norway.

Several times a week, a charter plane leaves the local airport for Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, bearing refugees bound for Western countries they know little or nothing about.

After almost two decades in the camps, most of the refugees are happy to be moving on.

But their departure leaves a huge hole in the community — often literally as their huts are pulled down to make room for vegetable plots to supplement the remaining refugees’ rations.

Om Prakash Dunghal’s parents and younger brother had just left the camp on the day AFP interviewed him, bound for Colorado, where he planned to follow them with his wife and daughter.

“We are happy to be leaving, though I have spent 14 years here so it is quite emotional,” he said.

“My wife’s father and brother say they do not want to go. I hope we can persuade them, it will be very hard to leave them behind.”

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says it is doing all it can to ensure families remain together.

“Whether to go on resettlement or not is an individual and a family decision,” said Diane Goodman, deputy representative for the UNHCR in Nepal.

“If an elderly person in the family does not wish to go for resettlement, we conduct further assessments before processing such cases.”

But in a culture where women traditionally live with their husbands’ parents after they marry, and extended families live cheek-by-jowl, it is not always possible to ensure that everyone remains together.

For 50-year-old refugee Damber Kumari, leaving the camp would be unthinkable.

In October 2007 Kumari’s son left home saying he was going to seek work abroad. Four months later, the family received news that he had been arrested and imprisoned in Bhutan, although they say they do not know why he went there.

“He used to say that we had to find a way of getting back to Bhutan,” said Kumari, her eyes welling with tears.

“The Red Cross helped us to go to Bhutan to visit him in jail and he told us he wanted to see his country.

“I have another son and daughter, but how can we go for resettlement when he is there?”

The UNHCR is putting in place measures to ensure that refugees left behind — particularly older ones who do not want the upheaval of resettlement — are taken care of in the camps if their families leave.

But at 85, Hari Maya Mainali says she has no qualms about starting a new life on another continent.

“I love this place, but we have to go where we can survive,” said Mainali, who hopes to follow her son and his wife to Jersey in the United States.

“Wherever we have food to eat, that’s home.”

Source: AFP

By Claire Cozens

For Redmond resident and sixth-year Microsoft employee Bill Hilf, it’s all about giving back. Hilf spent a lot of time in rural southeast Asia as a general manager of technical computing for Microsoft and what he saw on a routine jog one morning opened his eyes toward a golden opportunity to help local children.

“In my work, you pass by these communities of very, very poor, and one time I was jogging early one morning and these kids living in a ghetto started chasing me,” Hilf recalled. “They were all playing basketball, and I started playing with them. I immediately saw how excited they were just to be doing something out of what was a fairly anonymous life, as nobody pays attention to these kids.”

He later filled up three taxi cabs full of basketballs and brought them back to the kids, and that was the humble beginnings of Hilf’s non-profit, High Five Hope.

Hilf’s organization strives to use the sport of basketball to lift the spirit of homeless and underprivileged children worldwide, while teaching them valuable life skills such as self esteem, confidence, leadership and teamwork.

“We’re doing all this stuff to help with their biological needs, but if we don’t help them grow as human beings … will they be productive, helping the planet?” asked Hilf, citing that the biggest portion of children on the planet are growing up poor, in third-world countries. “Are we raising future criminals, or future presidents?”

Refuge for Refugees

In March 2008, while launching a version of Windows server in Thailand, Hilf and some volunteers set out for a United Nations Refugee Agency camp near the border of Burma (Union of Myanmar).

Upon his arrival, Hilf, who brought with him a bunch of basketballs and toys along with computer equipment and software, was taken aback by the poor quality of life for the tens of thousands of refugees at the camp.

“I asked the people at the camp what they really needed, and they didn’t need food, they had plenty of that from the relief agencies like the American Red Cross and other services,” Hilf noted. “They needed other stuff to keep kids entertained because the camp conditions were terrible.”

For the next few days, Hilf went out and coached basketball, interacting with the children, and enriching their lives. Many of them had never - or maybe on an extremely rare occasion - seen a white person before.

“At the refugee camp, there was no English. There was a moment where they (introduced) me as ‘Bill from Microsoft,’ and there was a kid that said, ‘I’m honored to meet you, Mr. Gates,’” Hilf recalled with a laugh. “They had never seen a lot of Americans.”

Later that year, High Five Hope hosted the first-annual Hope Sports Fest, held in metro Manila in the Philippines, which sponsored about 200 children. This year’s camp, which is set to kick off on Oct. 15 at the same location as last year, looks to expand by leaps and bounds.

Attendance is expected to break the 300 mark, and more local sponsors and big names are getting on board, such as former Philippines Basketball Association pro Vince Hizon, who gave a speech to the kids explaining the importance of High Five Hope and did a clinic with them last year.

“They look up to him like we would look up to Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant,” Hilf explained. “They all know who he is… and that’s helping with the instructional language barrier.”

And for anyone looking to get involved, you might be surprised at how far every donated dollar can go toward helping a child in need.

“It doesn’t take a lot, it’s not thousands or even hundreds of dollars,” Hilf said. “For $25 I can get a kid that lives on the street into a basketball program with shoes, a jersey, and food, for eight weeks. If we can get people to chip in, we can get more and more kids in, with the probability of helping more.”

A Personal Meaning

According to Hilf, the work that he currently does with High Five Hope really hits home.

“Sports had always been a cornerstone, a foundation, of my childhood,” Hilf explained. “My father died when I was seven, my brother when I was nine, divorce, and going through all these other things that were pretty impactful as a child, I always fell back on basketball.”

Hilf said he knows from his own experience that finding friends and mentors such as coaches through sports can help kids that have been through a lot of hardships in their young lives.

“We’re building these programs that use sports and basketball so kids can feel wanted, needed, build confidence and their character,” he said. “When you have nothing do to and you have no money, sitting on the street, the probability that you’re going to do something bad is extremely high. They can steal, use drugs, hurt somebody.”

And even as a new organization, High Five Hope has already witnessed some phenomenal, life-changing stories, according to Hilf.

“We had two kids that were heavy drug users, teen boys from Manila,” Hilf said. “After going through our camp, they’re now working for a local charity as basketball coaches. Every human life has equal value. If all of this work has an impact on one kid, that’s a success, it’s a win.”

Most importantly, Hilf wants to use the message of High Five Hope to serve as an inspiration to his two sons, ages nine and seven. Hilf explained that while his sons and countless other children take things like new “back-to-school” clothes and school supplies for granted, a majority of the kids in last year’s basketball tournament played barefoot.

“My kids asked why, and I said, ‘because they don’t have shoes,’” Hilf said. “My kids now have seen that they are fortunate, and they’re starting to understand the idea of giving back. The idea that I could be a role model for charitable giving for my kids is the biggest benefit I get from doing this.”

For more information about or to make a donation towards High Five Hope, visit the organization’s Web site at www.highfivehope.org.

Redmond Reporter Sports Reporter Tim Watanabe can be reached at twatanabe@redmond-reporter.com or (425) 867-0353, ext. 5054.

Source: Redmond Reporter

By Tim Watanabe

Photo: Mike Terry, Deseret News. While explaining the situations that led to the civil war in his home country of Sudan, Jiel Michael Yai fields questions and talks with fifth-graders at Jeremy Ranch Elementary School on Friday. 

PARK CITY - Jessica DiCaprio is biting her lip, thinking. Her eyes are all scrunched up in thought and she’s tapping her fingers against the wall in an unconscious, last-ditch effort to jog her memory.

But it’s no use.

The sandy-haired 11-year-old can’t think of a single thing she has in common with Jiel Michael Yai, the Sudanese refugee who visited her Park City elementary school Friday to teach children about current immigration issues.

“He has a big family?” she offers, hesitantly.

But even that, she realizes, doesn’t really count. After all, Yai, who fled Africa as a 5-year-old, hasn’t seen his mother since his village burned to the ground more than 20 years ago. His father was assassinated by the government, and two of his four brothers died fighting in the country’s ongoing civil war.

“It’s hard to really understand what’s happened to him,” the fifth-grader said finally. “I’ve always had everything I wanted. I’ve never been poor or hungry or not been with my family.”

Yai came to Jeremy Ranch Elementary School, tucked in the ski-resort-rich mountains of eastern Utah, hoping to enlighten DiCaprio and her classmates. At the request of a band of Park City mothers who call themselves “The Neighborhood Homework Club,” the somber, 6-foot-7-inch black man sat down with the fifth grade and talked about his journey from being a barefooted African boy with no home or future to a University of Utah graduate student working on a degree in statistics..

“We have it easy up here,” said Kristin Robinson, director of the parents’ club. “The children don’t ever question how hard life can be. You know, it’s important for them to understand the world’s struggles.”

Robinson asked Yai to come to Jeremy Ranch after she heard him speak at a fundraising event for The Chier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that puts Sudanese refugees known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan” through college. Students in the Neighborhood Homework Club raised the money to pay Yai’s fee, which benefits The Chier Foundation.
“Eventually, these kids will grow up to be the leaders of the United States,” said Yai, who doesn’t know his birthday because of his traumatic childhood but guesses he’s about 26 years old. “I want to share my experiences and give them a better vision of the world.”

Yai addressed the children only a few minutes, his voice soft and rumbling as he described walking barefoot as a refugee with strangers from Sudan to Ethiopia - a 1,000-mile journey - and being pushed from country to country before he boarded a plane to the United States in 2004. The rest of the hour he spent patiently attending to the 10- and 11-year-olds’ seemingly never-ending questions.

“Do you play basketball?”

“Do you remember your mom?”

“What did you eat when you were running away from the bad people?”

It was interesting to learn about Yai’s life, said fifth-grader Isa Buoscio, 10, because it was so different from the life they, as students at Jeremy Ranch, understand.

When Yai started school in Ethiopia, shortly after he left his mother and his burning childhood home behind, he didn’t have paper, books or even a classroom to meet in. He ate whatever he could find - including, one time, an already-dead hyena. He watched several of his friends starve to death.

“We studied out in the trees,” Yai said. “I learned the alphabet by writing in the dirt with my finger.”

Jeremy Ranch Elementary is stuffed full of library books, copy machines, printers and reams and reams of paper. At lunch, the children there chow down on vitamin-packed chicken wraps, green salad and fruit. In 11-year-old Andrew Robinson’s classroom, there are 15 desk-top computers - one for every two students. “I’m one of those kids who’s always gotten whatever he wants,” Andrew said, after shaking Yai’s hand. “It makes me feel bad that anyone has to have such a hard childhood.”

There are about 150 refugees living in Utah, who, like Yai, were separated by warfare from their families in Sudan. Twenty six of those, supported by The Chier Foundation, are attending college this semester.

Source: Deseret News

By Elizabeth Stuart

Source: ABC News

The organisers of a youth sporting program for Newcastle’s African migrant community say it is continuing to bridge the gap between the community and refugees.

The African Lions basketball program began three years ago and aims to help young African refugees, assimilate through sport.

Newcastle University’s Family Action Centre runs the youth development program with funding from Newcastle Council.

The centre’s manager of research, Deborah Hartman, says when the project was first established, the African community faced a lot of racism.

“Partly because these men are very visible and they were walking to and from the stadium in groups,” she said.

“There was some fear in the community about gangs - I would say that that fear has really been dispelled.

“These young men are fine young men and they are great contributors to the community.”