How this Durham summer camp is helping refugee children, one talking stick at a time
Five boys between 11 and 14 years old sit in a circle on the classroom floor, waiting for their turn with the talking stick.
The day’s question is “What are the five biggest joys and five biggest challenges of the last year,” and Rob Callus sits humbled as the boys share calmly.
All of the campers, and younger ones playing games and learning their letters down the hall, are refugees, and all have lost friends or family members.
“Sometimes they were witnessing very directly these traumatic things,” said Callus, the coordinator for Refugee and Immigrant Youth Services for World Relief Durham. “They talk about it almost as if they were watching a movie.”
Omar Obaydi, a volunteer interpreter and former World Relief client, helps the campers express themselves. A recent graduate of N.C. State University, he came to the state as a refugee from Iraq a little over six years ago. He started volunteering with the camp last year and is glad to be there to connect with the kids in a way other adults might not.
“When the kids come from war, they lack the security of being in one place, and the comfort of (having) a security zone,” Obaydi said.
Child-focused
This World Relief Durham summer camp is the only one of its kind in the state, and the emphasis on helping refugee children is fairly unique across the country.
“Traditional refugee resettlement programming is almost entirely focused on adults, but kids go through all the same traumas,” said Adam Clark, office director for World Relief Durham.
This is the third year of camp, which started with just 25 children, and the second year the camp is based at one of Durham’s public schools. Nearly 150 kids will spend part of their summer at Jordan High School, where they’ll take lessons, play games and work with community volunteers to help retain what they learned during the school year.
In a typical school year, refugee and other immigrant students have to learn all the new information other children do, but they also have to learn a new culture. Some may have to learn a new alphabet, on top of dealing with the instability and trauma of fleeing home.
The camp helps once school is out. It’s free, offers transportation and respects dietary restrictions like offering halal meals for Muslim children.
“It’s not just like school, but we do want to re-frame (and reduce) summer learning loss,” Callus said.
Declining admissions
A person seeking refugee status starts applying to stay in the United States before he or she gets here, and it can take years.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, a refugee is someone who is not in their country of origin and can’t return, due to persecution. An asylum seeker is similar, but he or she begins the application process from inside the United States or at the border.
Exactly how many refugees are allowed into the country varies widely. The U.S. government set the cap on refugees for fiscal 2018 at 45,000 but admitted only around 23,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute. This year’s limit was 30,000 people, the lowest ceiling for admissions since 2001, and even fewer will probably be admitted.
Once someone gets refugee status, he or she is sponsored by a placement organization like World Relief that helps them find a home and job, navigate the health-care system and enroll in Social Security.
In 2016, 1,230 refugees moved to the Triangle area.
Funding for resettlement agencies has declined, but Callus said World Relief has been trying to come up with creative interventions like the summer camp.
The majority of campers come from Afghanistan, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he said, but also Iran, Myanmar and Central African Republic.
Callus and Obaydi sit in the circle with their middle-school boys. They follow the same rules, talking only when they have the talking stick and answering all of the questions.
Sometimes the talking circle drifts into a lighter space — what superpowers do you want, one camper asks.
But the conversation is often about responsibility. Callus said many of these children take on duties like interpreting and caring for younger siblings, which can leave them less time to just be kids.
He and Obaydi try to help them with that tension by being honest about adulthood and giving them space to grow.
“You do see them shaping into leaders,” Callus said.
This story was originally published July 26, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
