This weekend I was a part of two particularly engaging conversations and activities that I wanted to reflect on and note 1- what happened & 2- what I learned. One took place at an exhibit in downtown Seattle called Forced from Home and another was at an education bbq event that my roommate invited me to with two masters in education students.
Forced from Home
I've become more active on Twitter following professor's whose work I am particularly interested in and also following organizations that have to do with making, education, engineering, equity, etc. This already came in handy when I was scrolling through I found out about an event happening by the Discovery Center this weekend. It was an hour of my time - a short event but I learned so much.
One of the big takeaways of the event that I found particularly interested and I tried to capture in the pictures below is the juxtaposition of this event in the middle of the booming, shiny, tech-y city of Seattle.
The event was put on by Forced from Home and my initial expectation of the event was that it would be a tour where I would be educated about the refugee crisis worldwide. I have read and heard about Syria, about the refugee crisis but I knew that I had very little knowledge going in besides the general media headlines that my attention catches. It amazed me how Forced from Home (under the umbrella organization of Doctors without Borders) transformed this 10,000 square foot lot space into an interactive exhibit to inform the public about the refugee crisis in a humane and respectable manner to share the stories of the volunteers, the doctors, and those who are refugees. I was amazed by the content of the exhibit and again, how much I learned in an hour, but also the organization and the logistics and the effort that went into transforming this space. Our 12 person tour group was lead by Linda a member of Doctors without Borders -- abbreviated as MSF because the organization was founded by french members -- who serves as an HR staff member around the world. Linda had her prepared script and noted as she gave the tour that she had probably given 100s of them at this point but made the experience so candid as she shared detailed descriptions of her time in Jordan and South Sudan with us throughout the tour.
The tour started with a 360 video inside a dome of interviews with people who are refugees - sharing details of the moments when they realized they had to flee their homes and describing the items they picked up as well as their experience in refugee camps. We stood in the middle while the 360 video played all around us and as a viewer you had to rotate to see what was in the background of the room, the environment in which the interview was taking place. Here I thought about the technology that goes into creating a 360 video and I saw there were about 6 projects hung on the roof. How complicated is it to make a 360 video and split the panels to project individually and make a collective video? Good question I'd like to explore because it was really cool.
Next after this primer we went to five walls where we each stood next to the country our identification card said we were from. Linda explained to us why the exhibit focused on these areas: Honduras, South Sudan, Syria and two others that escape my mind right now -- it is because these are the regions where there are the most refugees. Here we were given 20 seconds to select 5 items that we would take on our journey as refugees. Along the exhibit after certain stations we had to lose an item - symbolic of the things refugees have to give up along the way. When visiting MSF facilities we did not have to give up an item since all of their services are free.
Throughout the exhibit, two big questions came to mind:
- What happens to babies as they are born along the journey?
- Here I learned the term "Stateless." Defined as individuals whose country of origin will not recognize them
- How does this affect the child's mental well-being to not have a place where they belong or where they are from?
- When traveling on a boat across a long journey for some refugees what does health and sanitation look like? How long do you have to hold your pee & for women what happens when you have your period?
Education Conversation at Ed BBQ