Jackson Free Press

Angelina Jolie makes me like her again with the statement "Nobody deserves an award for humanitarian aid, we should all just be doing it." in an interview with CNN.

I haven't been a fan of Jolie since I convinced myself that she stole Aniston's husband. Sorry, but I'm bitter like that.

What I DO like about her is her obvious dedication to her UN humanitarian efforts.

I know that for a long time they were calling the Hurricane survivors "refugees' and then they stopped. Mainly because a refugee is someone that has fled their country to survive.

I don't know how many people know this but Catholic Charities in Jackson has a program for refugee children from the Sudan. These are children she is speaking about in this interview. These children, often times, walked across their whole country to get away from conflicts and camps. Some of them saw their family murdered. (If you haven't seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, it will give you a little understanding of what this was like).

These children get across borders (some of them after walking across deserts with no food and no water) and are brought to the US as "Unaccompanied Refugee Minors". These children have no families and nothing to which to return. They are put into programs in the US and given an education, a place to live, and trauma counseling.

We have some of them here. They are interesting and beautiful children. Soulful, really. Many of them act years older than they really are. Most of them don't know the smallest things about themselves, like their birthday. On their birth certificate most are given the birthday "January 1st" by immigration services.

Needless to say, January 1st in the CC refugee program is a busy day. ;)

These children, if in their home country, would have met an uncertain fate. Probably murdererd, if not sold into slave trade.

This post is just for a little information about the plight of refugees in the world. This program ALWAYS needs money (of course) and I'm sure that not many people in Jackson know that this program exists.

"Nobody deserves an award for humanitarian aid, we should all just be doing it."

Previous Comments

ID

103164

Comment

Good program to highlight. Some of the local Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches have been taking care of Sudanese refugees--even holding services in Dinka, the native Sudanese language. Several of the "graduates" from St. Andrew's and Catholic Charities have gone on to Millsaps, which published a little booklet on the lives of some of the Sudanese "lost boys" (and occasional lost girl). What I find most remarkable about all of this is that most of these heroic young adults want to return to the Sudan so they can take care of their family--parents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews--as they've established themselves in a good career track and have the clout to take care of others. That's what many of them are looking forward to. They know how much easier it is to live here, but they're working to go back. And as far as I know, none of them are getting an award for it. Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-10-12T17:11:27-06:00