Hello readers,

Today it’s my turn, so let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Eman, I am Egyptian. I work with an international organisation, and I study communication for development and social change, because I believe that communication is the tool we can use to fight for a better world.

I hope you have had a chance to have a look at our blog’s banner, because I wish to reflect on a very specific part of it; the children beside the tent. They are known as refugees and that tent is the closest thing they have to a home. In the picture, the children are looking up, maybe to a plane or a helicopter distributing food or clothes, etc. The way I see it, the children are looking up to hope. But that raises an important question: Who are they expecting to fulfill their hopes, and how can these unwritten hopes be fulfilled?

In the coming weeks, I wish to dedicate my writings to try and answer these questions. I am planning to explore how my area of studies can help refugees around the world. I thought of why I want to dedicate my writings to this cause, and I realized that the reason is that refugees were once like you and me, people who belonged to a country and had their own safe homes.

So, here are my two main reflections that my writings will revolve around:

My next article will explore the lives inside the tents in refugee camps. In other words, the homes of refugees and how we can help them live a normal life without normalizing their situation as refugees. 

Yesterday, the UN marked the International Disaster Risk Reduction Day. This year, the theme is “Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to people by 2030.” (1). This takes us to my second reflection:

Can we save people before they become refugees?

To answer this question, I will try to explore how to best use ICTs to slow down the unmerciful impacts of climate change and try to stop droughts and floods before they destroy countries and displace their people. 

I know I am not alone, many out there are as passionate as I am to this cause and so, I would appreciate your thoughts, opinions and comments on my reflections and views. Maybe together we can offer the refugees of the world a better chance. As Ernest Hemingway once wrote “the world is a fine place, and is worth fighting for” (2), and with this I wish to fight for the right of refugees to see the “fine world”. 

I thank you all for your time and for sharing the passion.

See you in the coming weeks.

 

Works cited

1. Disaster Reduction Day. (n.d.). https://www.un.org/en/observances/disaster-reduction-day.
2. Hemingway, E. (1995, July 1). For Whom the Bell Tolls. Scribner.