Posts Tagged ‘Youth’

When Mary Makuta came to the U.S. in 2016 with her mother and four siblings, she hadn’t been to school in four years. Five years later, she’s preparing to graduate from Central High School, the first in her family to do so.  

“My mom didn’t graduate high school. My dad didn’t graduate,” Mary said as a slow smile spread across her face. “I’ll be the first one in the family. I’m excited. I’m proud.” 

And yet despite being the first one to graduate, Mary isn’t thinking about herself. Instead, she’s thinking of how she can give back to the community and be a role model to her brothers and sisters as she finishes out her final year. 

“I want to be a role model for my siblings. I could see one of them getting there,” she said proudly. “They’re really smart, and I love them.” 

With that in mind, Mary is doing everything she can to help them succeed. In the fall, she’ll be starting university as a business major, and, in her free time, she’ll be guiding her family through the American school system, just as World Relief Memphis did for her when she arrived.  

“I’m trying to get them to be more active and join different clubs like Bridge. I heard that colleges like hearing that you join clubs or create them,” said Mary, 18. “My only reason [that I didn’t] was that my mom had to work after school, and I had to babysit. They won’t have to do that.” 

Because Mary will be attending college close to home, she will continue to help her mother and siblings. With the freedom that comes with a college class schedule, Mary will babysit and work to ensure that her siblings can pursue all the opportunities available to them.  

In fact, her first goal after high school is to get a job and help her mom buy a house. As a future realtor, Mary will be getting a first-hand look at the real estate market in doing so.  

Before that, however, there is one thing that she must do first: help other refugees come to the United States alongside World Relief and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. 

“Real estate can wait,” said Mary, who is graduating one year early. “I want to work with them, volunteer—anything. It doesn’t matter. It’s a way of giving back.” 

Before the pandemic struck, she had already decided how she would do so. She was going to volunteer in a refugee camp in Uganda, but the trip was cancelled as the situation around the world worsened.  

With borders closed for the foreseeable future, Mary is looking into other ways to give back from her home in Memphis such as volunteering with World Relief.  

“[Someone] volunteered when we got here, taking us about America—to buy groceries, to donut places. It was fun, and everything was new to us,” Mary explained. “That’s what I want to do—help new refugees coming to Memphis.” 

Mary, we are so proud of all your hard work, and we hope to see working alongside us one day as we welcome our neighbors to Memphis!  

If you want to get involved in the lives of our youth, fill out an application to become a Youth Mentor today. 

As part of Black History Month, we’ve asked a few of the youth in the refugee community to tell us their experience learning about it. At World Relief, we work to honor and include all cultures and heritage, and celebrating Black history is just one way to do so. The last in a series of three, Mary Makuta tells us about her own inspirations within the Black community.

Food. Cooking. Hairstyles. Make-up. Technology. Transportation. The list could go on. When Mary Makuta first arrived in Memphis, everything seemed foreign to her.

Over time, however, she’s adapted, and the high school senior is now thriving in her new home. In June, she will be graduating from Central High School ahead of schedule. In just four years, she will have gone from seventh grade to graduation, and it’s all thanks to her hard work and determination.

When I spoke to Mary, she was on her way home from studying to go attend night classes. In order to graduate early, she takes double the normal class load, and she works part-time on the side as well. 

Despite all her engagements, Mary still took the time to sit down and speak with me about Black History Month. In every country she’s lived in—the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Namibia and the U.S.—she has always learned about history and found it important.

“What happened years ago, we can learn from it and not let it happen a second time,” said Mary, now 18. “People did many things for our country so that it can be better in the future.”

In particular, she remembers the prominent civil rights leaders of the 1960s. To her, they were “being brave for others. Even though they were scared, they did not give up.”

Their perseverance, alongside other prominent African American figures, are in part what inspire her today. Mary one day plans to be a prominent businesswoman, working in the real estate and transportation businesses.

Because for her, anything is possible now. The Obamas and others have proven that in recent years, and the brave work of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks helped pave the way.

“Kamala Harris, she said that every girl can one day be like her,” Mary told me at the end of our time together.

With that thought in mind, Mary has set her sights high, but we have no doubt she will succeed as she already has in balancing school, work and family life in a new country. And although she may miss her home in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we have no doubt that she will have a profound impact in her new community of Memphis.

Bailey Clark serves as the Communications Coordinator for World Relief Memphis. With a background in journalism and advertising, she is passionate about storytelling and its power to make a difference.

As part of Black History Month, we’ve asked a few of the youth in the refugee community to tell us about their experience learning about it. At World Relief, we work to honor and include all cultures and heritage, and celebrating Black history is just one way to do so. The first in a series of three, Emilienne, or Emily as she’s called in the U.S., tells us what Black History Month means to her in addition to her own culture.

At age thirteen, Emily Yope and her family moved to Memphis. For years, her family had been working to complete the paperwork necessary to move to a new country in hopes of avoiding the conflict in their home, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Upon her arrival, Emily immediately wanted to return to her old home.

“I wanted to go back. The first day, everything was different: the food, the people, the language, the house and school,” Emily said. “But with time, I’ve gotten used to it, and now I like it here.”

What once seemed foreign has slowly grown to feel normal—speaking English instead of French or Swahili, eating pizza, even wearing different clothes. She’s been able to incorporate aspects of her own culture, such as continuing to make the traditional dish fufu, a pastry often served with meat and a sauce, alongside these new American traditions.

However, it’s been more than just adapting to American culture. In school, she’s also been introduced to Black culture and history during Black History Month.

“They talked about it in history classes, and they had programs for it,” said Emily, a senior at Central High School. “They celebrated it on Fridays after school. People sang and acted out important moments that happened. [They] recited poems.” 

Out of all of this, the moments that stood out to her the most were the ones when words were put into action: “I love Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman. They stood up and did something. They stood up for themselves.” 

As a student also coming from a different culture, Emily understands how essential it is to learn about others and value their differences.

“It’s important [to learn about Black history]. It’s cool to learn the cultures and history of people,” said Emily, now 18. “Their culture is where they came from—how life has been since they got here, and how it’s going.”

Over time, Emily would like to see some of her own culture or that of her fellow refugees included as well: “When it comes to my skin color, I’m one of them. But when it comes to my actual culture and traditions, it’s different.”

Some of those differences can be seen in something as simple as a name. In America, when you meet someone, you automatically call them by their name. In the DRC, however, you wouldn’t necessarily call someone by their name. If they’re older than you, for example, you would call them aunt or uncle.

“I had to get used to that,” Emily said with a laugh. “You get all these uncles that you don’t know, but just because they’re older than you, you call them uncle.”

Although this is just one of many examples Emily shared, there are certain things from her home that can still be applied to the U.S. today. The DRC has thousands of tribes, and each one of them has their own culture.

“People look the same, but this person belongs here, and that person belongs there,” Emily explained. “But when they meet, they’re all the same people. In America, it’s the same.”

Some people may be from Memphis, and others from California, but they all still hold certain values and cultural traditions in common such as the way they dress or the food they eat. In a way, Emily said, it’s similar to her home. Everyone has different cultures and stories, as can be seen with Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month, but everyone is still American.

These cultural differences are part of what makes America the United States of America, and, when the country was founded nearly 250 years ago, everyone who came did so with the hope of a better life, just as Emily and her family did.

Today, we celebrate those who came in addition to those who fought for a better life, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the many others that came before and after them.

“I would love to go back and live in that time,” Emily said. “The fact that some people had to sacrifice to live better . . . I would love to do that, to ensure that my grandkids live a good life.”

One day, Emily plans to do just that by returning and helping those in her home country. But for the moment, she’s taking notes during this Black History Month and continuing to embrace the different cultures surrounding her in her new home, Memphis.

Bailey Clark serves as the Communications Coordinator for World Relief Memphis. With a background in journalism and advertising, she is passionate about storytelling and its power to make a difference.

Photo by Emily Frazier

As part of Black History Month, we’ve asked a few of the youth in the refugee community to tell us their experience learning about it. At World Relief, we work to honor and include all cultures and heritage, and celebrating Black history is just one way to do so. The second in a series of three, Reachaell, whom we spoke to in June as well, tells us about her own culture and how it ties into Black history.

Growing up in Africa, the life Reachaell has now was a far-away dream. As a child, she and her friends would go get water, and, amidst games of hide-and-seek, they would be playing another game as well—one where they would have to hide food under their bed to make sure no one would touch it.

When the opportunity presented itself to come to America, Reachaell was thrilled. After hearing the rumors of it in their refugee camp in Uganda, the U.S. seemed like a dream.

“We heard everything they were saying, and I was like, ‘Am I dreaming? Is this real?’” said Reachaell, who came when she was 14. “When I saw the plane sitting there, I was so excited.”

Despite the big change that it would bring and the family and friends that she would miss, Reachaell knew what it meant to be able to go to America. Her grandparents and uncle were already there, and, by coming to Memphis, the rest of the family would have a chance at a different life after having fled the Democratic Republic of Congo years earlier.

“[My grandparents] came to America for the same reason why we came. In Africa, there were people dying. They don’t have food. They don’t have homes to live in,” Reachaell, now 18, explained. “To come here, it’s a chance. It’s an honor.”

However, it does not mean that everything was always easy. When she arrived four years ago, Reachaell had never had the opportunity to go to school before, and she only spoke her native language of Swahili.

Yet in just four short months, she had already learned English thanks to a teacher who also spoke Swahili, and it opened the door for her to learn about other topics such as Black history.

“They talk about Black history in school, and it’s important to learn about [it.] It’s important because you really want to know what’s going on, what’s happening and stuff,” said Reachaell, who is now a senior at Douglass High School.

As a student attending school for the first time in her life, she was suddenly introduced to subjects and people she had never before heard about: Martin Luther King. Jr, Rosa Parks, the Civil Rights Movement.

At the same time that she was learning about these iconic moments and the role models of Black history, she was also realizing the role she had to play in it too: “I’m here, so I feel like I’m a part of it.”

As a result, she would one day like to see her own culture represented here. Reachaell noted that when people speak about Africa, they tend to speak only about the poverty that is there. However, there is so much more to be celebrated than that, and it can be included in Black history as well.

In fact, her own role model, Zuchu, is a singer from Tanzania. She was the first East African female artist to receive more than 100,000 subscribers in a week, and she was recently named one of BBC’s 10 African music stars to watch for in 2021.

“I sing sometimes, and I would want to be like her,” said Reachaell, who started singing at the age of 6. “She works really hard, and she makes good music.”

This is just one small piece of culture and history that Reachaell has brought with her from Africa. Yet if there is one thing that she would take from the U.S. to her home, it would be school. The opportunity to learn, and to learn about Black history, is something she wishes everyone could experience.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to go to school, but my mom didn’t have money to pay for it,” said Reachaell. Instead, as the eldest of six children, she would stay home and care for her brothers and sisters. 

“There’s a lot of things to learn. The [English] language, everything. History.”

Moving forward, it is no doubt that history will continue to evolve, and people everywhere will continue to learn from it. Perhaps one day, these stories will be included as well. For now, World Relief Memphis will continue to honor Black history and the diverse cultures around us not just in February but throughout the year.

Bailey Clark serves as the Communications Coordinator for World Relief Memphis. With a background in journalism and advertising, she is passionate about storytelling and its power to make a difference.