Finding Freedom

This photo essay was submitted by Brennan O'Connor / NOMAD Photos.

Brennan O'Connor is the Southeast Asian adviser for The Peoples of the World and president of NOMAD Photos agency, a Canadian cooperative of photojournalists dedicated to using the economic efficiencies and social power of a collective to highlight under-reported social, political, health and environmental issues worldwide.





In 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began resettling thousands of Burmese ethnic minorities from Thai refugee camps to locations across the world. The UN referred to it in a report as "the world's largest resettlement operation." By the time it's completed in 2010, over 30 thousand people will be resettled across the world.

the virtuous brew that kicks back

CityKid Java is a savvy business with a keen understanding of how to channel the profits from exceptional coffee to benefit an entire community of kids. Its comprehension of how to build and sustain a successful business is only surpassed by its commitment to the community in the Central and Phillips neighborhoods in the south side of Minneapolis.

Buying coffee is a much more complicated endeavor than it used to be due to its exponential growth in popularity in recent years. Grocery stores stock entire aisles with an array of flavors and roasts. The other day I was browsing the coffee section in a grocery store when a bag of CityKid Java caught my attention. I took a closer look at the package and read, "the virtuous brew that kicks back to kids in the Twin Cities."

Curious to learn more, I set up an interview with CityKid Java's general manager Jennifer Siegle and Mark-Peter Lundquist, founder of CityKid Java and vice president of Urban Ventures Leadership Foundation. As I sat down with these two, their compassion for their community and passion for coffee were apparent. Mark-Peter, who brings a background as team leader at Caribou, explained that CityKid Java was started as a for-profit subsidiary of Urban Ventures "to bring about an infusion of operating dollars." 100 percent of profits go back into Urban Ventures.



In 2002 CityKid set out to combat an economic downturn and spur the important programs of Urban Ventures. The programs are extensive and offer mentoring opportunities for at-risk kids at the Urban Hub, where kids can also skateboard at an indoor skate park, or record music at a state-of-the-art recording studio. There is also a family center where parenting classes are offered and a learning lab where kids can come after school. These are just a few programs that CityKid Java helps fund at Urban Ventures, which stretches over a conflicted area like a blanket offering refuge and support.

The Elephant in the Room

This multimedia essay was submitted by Brent Lewin.

The Elephant In The Room from Brent Lewin on Vimeo.

Since 2007 I have been documenting the plight of the Asian elephant in Thailand. Elephants, revered symbols of Thailand's glorified past, have long walked side by side with the monarchy and common farmers alike. The indispensable role of elephants in Thai society has been captured in countless tales and works of art along temple walls. One would be hard pressed to look in any direction in the capital and not find an elephant motif somewhere. But for all the iconic representations of elephants as symbols of strength and prosperity, in reality the only elephants seen in Bangkok are those being led by their mahouts, wandering the congested streets begging.

Groups of mahouts from farming villages in Surin province come to Bangkok to squat in fields and walk the streets, offering tourists the opportunity to feed their pet elephants sugarcane for a couple of dollars. With no income beyond a short farming season, the mahouts claim that traveling to urban centers with their elephants is a matter of survival.

Although it is illegal to bring elephants into Bangkok, the poverty in Thailand's rural areas, the loss of the elephants' natural habitat and the resulting threat of starvation evoke sympathy among Thais. Most police, politicians and citizens continue to turn a blind eye to the urban elephants, failing to address the underlying issues and allowing the situation to remain "the elephant in the room."





Brent Lewin

Taste of Success: Cookie Company Builds Capacity

Ingenuity, determination and a little bit of luck has marked Alicia Polak's trajectory from a business student to founder and CEO of a for-profit, community-enriching enterprise in South Africa, Khaya Cookie Company. Simply put, the company was founded to "create opportunity one bite at a time," teaching the skill of baking gourmet cookies while providing gainful employment to the impoverished residents.

While pursuing a MPH/MBA at New York University, Alicia's dream of holding a leadership position at an international aid organization prompted her to pursue an internship at the UN. There she worked with Gay Rosenblum-Kumar, who specialized in conflict resolution and had helped prepare South Africa for its first democratic election. Her exposure to South Africa intrigued and excited Alicia to create and enroll in an exchange program with University of Cape Town, where she interned at Freeplay Foundation. Working on the issues while traveling within the country exposed and endeared her to the people, and to the dark history of South Africa, a country she began to call her own. After working for an investment bank in New York and a year as an employee of Freeplay Foundation, she was ready to start something new.

In 2004, inspired by the mission of Ben & Jerry's ice cream company to create and redistribute wealth, she founded Khaya Cookie Company in the town of Khayelitsha, with one Xhosa-speaking worker and a single recipe for chocolate chip cookies. In two years, the company grew to employ 10 workers and as a successful supplier of gourmet cookies to high-end establishments throughout South Africa. The cookies are made using unique South African ingredients such as rooibos extract with recipes for a variety of fruit flavors. In keeping with her community-building mission, the company was sold to the locals in 2005 and Alicia stayed on as the CEO. In 2006, working with the Wharton Societal Wealth Program, a University of Pennsylvania business school initiative, she founded the US-based Khaya Cookie Company, and has focused her efforts on setting up the US distribution center and expanding marketing efforts.

Today Khaya Cookie Company employs over 500 South Africans (95 percent of whom are women), is a major supplier within South Africa and is sold worldwide through its website and the gourmet retailer Zingerman's. In 2007, it was recognized by the Food Network as the Edible Entrepreneur of the Year. But the company does not measure its successes through commercial profits alone. One of its more tangible successes' is the positive changes it has brought to the lives of its employees. One way they have enpowered lives has been through the comprehensive life skills training that its production facility offers every employee.

Vanesca, a 25-year-old single mother solely responsible for her daughter and disabled mother, joined the team with little prior experience. In addition to baking cookies, she enrolled in the first-aid course offered by the Life Skills Training Program, where she discovered her love for nursing.

In addition to the first aid course, the program teaches health and safety (including AIDS education), business skills including management training, and personal finances management; and the younger staff members are strongly encouraged to pursue higher education. Andiswa, the youngest employee at the company, is now in her third year at university with Alicia's encouragement.

Curriculum Teaches Awareness of Hunger

“Trick or treat for UNICEF!” Does that sound familiar to you? I was one of those children who went door to door with my younger sister to collect change from neighbors in our orange boxes. It was probably my first experience being a global citizen in an attempt to help children around the world. I remember that the children we were raising money for didn’t have enough food and that made an impact on me.

TeachUNICEF is a new program designed to make an impact on children. That’s what UNICEF does best: it has helped more children, in over 150 countries, than any other humanitarian organization. TeachUNICEF is a program designed to engage students to become aware of the needs of children and their families worldwide. It was launched in 2005 as a free resource for US educators of students in grades three to 12. The content is derived from the UNICEF annual report “State of the World’s Children” and the curriculum is written with the national standards of social studies, mathematics and other key subjects at the forefront.

Some of the units are arranged into themes such as poverty, safe water, armed conflict, gender equality and child labor and child rights. There are plenty of visual aids such as maps and photos to spark discussion; I even watched an educational YouTube video that was filmed in Niger. Ways to take individual action are also included.

24,000 children still die daily from preventable causes. Through TeachUNICEF, students can get involved in UNICEF’s work to “bring that number to zero.”

UNICEF
TeachUNICEF

School and Hot Meals

After 15 years serving as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and 18 years owning and operating a McDonald’s franchise with his wife in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Bob Davisson decided it was time to retire and help build a better future for an impoverished country and its children.

In November 2005 Davisson accepted an invitation to visit Haiti from some missionaries who were in the process of building a school, but were struggling to get it up and running. Meeting children of this poverty-stricken country filled Davisson with compassion and he felt called to help. “This is something that had been on my heart for many years,” he says. “The trip to Haiti and the connections made at the time confirmed this was where I was to serve God.” Less than two months later, Davisson and his missionary friends completed their first school in Chabin, a small town in the southern part of Haiti.

The children’s joy in response to the school’s opening provided the inspiration for Lifeline Haiti, the nonprofit organization that Davisson started with his wife, Linda. Since that time, Lifeline Haiti has completed 14 elementary schools, three bible schools and two high schools for 4,300 children. In the areas where they have set up schools, students receive instruction along with clean drinking water, one hot meal a day, and whatever medicine they need.



The statistics paint a grim picture of the obstacles children face growing up in the poorest country in the western hemisphere: 54 percent of the population goes without clean drinking water, 49 percent are malnourished and 45 percent are illiterate. Each day 400 children die from starvation in Haiti, where the median age of the nine million citizens is only 18 years old.

Progress in such an uphill battle is measured incrementally, but Davisson feels that Lifeline Haiti has made significant changes in the areas it has touched. “There have been no deaths due to starvation in any of the areas,” he says. “Along with the microloan businesses we have set up so far, all 63 of them are doing well and helping to stimulate the economy.”

Much of the success thus far can be attributed to the organization’s partnership with Reverend Wilbert Placide, Bishop of the Christian Evangelical Church of Haiti. “When I first met him it was like we had known each other all our lives,” Davisson says of Rev. Placide. “Without someone like this, we would still be at our first school.” As part of their partnership, Lifeline Haiti opens schools at Placide’s churches.

Student earns scholarship, celebrates success of summer camp in Nepal

This is a cross-post from St. Olaf College News by Kari VanDerVeen

A ceremony put on by local villagers to welcome Ghimire's staff and students included songs and dances performed by local children.

St. Olaf student Subhash Ghimire ’10 set out this summer to establish a camp in rural Nepal for children impacted by the country’s decade-long civil war, but he didn’t stop there. In addition to managing a 16-member team and 42 children during a successful six-week camp, he created a scholarship fund, established a library, and launched a foundation to support youth movements.

It was the experience of a lifetime, he says, that was topped off by a letter he received shortly after returning to the United States informing him that he had received a scholarship from the Vincent L. Hawkinson Foundation for Peace and Justice. He’ll use part of the $3,000 award to attend law school, but is putting a portion of it toward the scholarship fund he established for Nepalese schoolchildren.

“To be able to help the people who needed it the most was the best part of the camp,” Ghimire says. “I could see in people’s eyes how thankful they were.”

Ghimire will deliver two presentations on campus about his efforts to foster peace and social change in Nepal. The first will be held Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 4 p.m. in Holland Hall 317. The second will be part of the World Issues Dialogue held Thursday, Oct. 15, at 5:30 p.m. in Buntrock Commons, Trollhaugen Room. He will also be presenting at the European Summit for Global Transformation in Rotterdam, Netherlands at the end of November.

A summer success
Ghimire established a summer camp in Arupokhari — the remote village in western Nepal where he was born — using a $10,000 grant he received from Davis Projects for Peace, an initiative that funds student plans for grassroots projects that promote peace. Half of the camp’s 42 children were under age 10, all were under age 14, and most had lost one or both parents during the war.

Using traditional song, dance, theatre, and other teaching aids, the Fulbari Summer Camp worked to help children overcome the scars of war and the country’s caste system. The children, many of whom had witnessed their parents’ murders or lost siblings as well during the war, began to open up throughout the camp and play with new friends, Ghimire says. “The children no longer sketch guns, and instead draw books and birds. To me, that was the biggest achievement of the summer camp,” he says.

Strength From Within

This photo essay was submitted by Ken Driese







Joel Katamba is visionary. Compelled to help his struggling family as a young man, he cut short his schooling, vowing to help others in his community get the education he missed. As an adult, Joel built the Kyamulinga School using funds generated by selling pineapples.

I stayed with Joel while visiting Kyamulinga to photograph a successful partnership between his school and a small but energetic non-profit from Boulder, Colorado, called One School at a Time. One School worked with Joel and the local community to add a classroom building and a water system at Kyamulinga, facilities that were needed but unaffordable, since many students can’t pay full fees.

One School at a Time helped by providing funding and technical oversight for the addition of a classroom and an on-site water system including a cistern, treadle pump, filtration and solar heater. The community provided labor, local materials and enthusiasm. For girls, at-school water is especially important because it saves hours spent out of class, walking to remote ponds where they are vulnerable to assault.

Their Own Kind of “Extreme Home Makeover”

A group from Austin, Texas called Austin2Africa will travel this November to Nyanga, South Africa, one of the poorest townships in Cape Town. The group will be restoring, painting, decorating, and celebrating the completion of an orphanage building there.

Called Emasithandane, or Emasi, the orphanage is home to 32 children from ages zero to 17 years old. Amazingly, all of the kids are taken care of by one woman, Mama Zelphina Maposela, who founded the orphanage. A nurse, Mama Zelphina was taking care of patients with AIDS when she decided to open Emasi for the children of the patients. It is a warm, loving place, yet it is very small — two rooms, a small kitchen, and a little bathroom — and in disrepair.

This is what the Austin2Africa project would like to change. The project took seed in 2008, when Vanessa Noel volunteered for two months at the Emasi orphanage in South Africa. She visited the preschool in the village and was shocked at its condition. Vanessa asked how much it would take to repair the preschool and was amazed how little amount it would take — so she decided to raise the money herself and manage the renovation.

So Vanessa got her friends and co-workers involved, and Austin2Africa was born. The group’s goal is both to restore and expand the orphanage and to help it become more established and official. The group believes that the renovations will create opportunities for further funding for the orphanage, including governmental social service support. Institutions must meet certain requirements to receive funding, and the upgrades would make the orphanage more eligible.

More than anything, Mama Zelphina and the children just need more space for their home. According to the website, “This will allow the children to live and grow in a comfortable space, and to potentially welcome new orphans in need of a safe home and happy place to live.”

BAOBAB

This film by Simon Sticker introduces three projects that the Baobab Family, a Germany-based nonprofit, carries out in Mombasa, Kenya. The Baobab Family cares for 31 kids at its orphanage, teaches tailoring skills that enable community members to earn an income, and supports people affected by HIV/AIDS while raising awareness of HIV/AIDS. Sticker says, “Even when a film could not give you the experience — the smell in the slums, the sounds and the feeling of being in these little huts — … maybe it could give a glimpse of a feeling for it. And of what could actually be done.”

BAOBAB from Flow Media on Vimeo.

Simon Sticker
Baobab Family

Why Congo Matters (Part II of II): Top 5 Reasons

This article was submitted by Emily Troutman.



1. An enormous tragedy requires an enormous response. Since 1998, 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes in the DRC, making it the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WWII.

The above statistic comes from the International Rescue Committee and is often cited in coverage of Congo. But for full effect, it ought to be amended to this: “Since 1998, 5.4 million people have died — one at a time — from war-related causes.” Because 5.4 million is such an astonishing number, it has the power to make progress seem impossible.

We are asked in a situation like this to think smaller, not bigger. Just as death is experienced one person at a time, hope and progress can also happen through each of us. The enormity of our response is not measured in size, but in depth and of commitment over time.

2. A little safety goes a long way. Ninety percent of early deaths are due to non-violent, preventable causes including malnutrition, infectious disease and complications from childbirth.

Congo's staggering mortality rate results from its ongoing battle with the FDLR, Hutu forces that invaded the country following the genocide in Rwanda. Most people will be affected by the ways in which this violence limits their freedom of movement. When people don't feel safe to travel, they also don't have access to medicine, health care, education or clean water.



3. Women need other women to stand beside them. In March of 2009, there were 1,154 confirmed rapes just in North Kivu province. Of these rapes, 65 percent were committed by the armed forces.

The national army, the FARDC, recently underwent an integration of forces, in which a Tutsi rebel group, the CNDP, was folded into the regular army. Some people blame these numbers on that change, saying a new, more criminal element is at work. Ultimately, however, the epidemic of rape in Congo is an old problem that only got worse.

At the heart of the problem is the Congolese government's unwillingness to hold criminals accountable. Rapists are either not tried, or are tried and then set free. In addition, there are no safeguards to keep people with known criminal records out of the military. UN peacekeeping forces continue to work side-by-side with the FARDC despite its incompetence.

Why Congo Matters (Part I of II)

Why Congo Matters from Emily Troutman on Vimeo.

After spending a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I find myself speaking most often about the numbers: 5.4 million dead, 2,000 rapes per month, 17,000 UN soldiers, a war that started 15 years ago (or more?).

And suddenly, the conflict seems impossibly huge, unsolvable, tragic and remote. It is easy to forget that numbers are symbols, representing real people who take up an actual, physical space; who walk the down the dirt roads at sunset and carry water from the river, just as they did when I was there.

Numbers are a simple way to measure what has been lost. But we also lose something in the counting. We begin to think we know the exact dimensions of a problem, and then we file it away to be solved later, somewhere between running out of milk and global warming.

For a number to be useful, it should have a beating heart and a face. It should collect names and remind us of something in ourselves. A number should challenge us to unravel it, to give it a smell (the earthy jungle undergrowth), a color (the black volcanic dust), a taste (papaya), and a sound (the “snap” of a green bean).

Each death, each rape in Congo, happens in a moment when the sun is either up or down, when the rain has started or stopped, when a small phrase was uttered, or a glance exchanged. The numbers can tell us something about how often it has happened, but almost nothing about how. Or who.

With a story this big, and so little public awareness of it, I started to ask myself, “Does Congo matter?” I don't know. I guess that's hard to measure. It matters to the people who live there. It matters to me.

The statistics used in this video can be found in the following reports:

UNICEF – Country Statistics
International Rescue Committee – Mortality in the DRC, An Ongoing Crisis
International Committee of the Red Cross – Survey on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Civilians

Emily’s Photography
Emily’s blog, Who We Are / How We Live

College Students Teach Health Ed

According to Peer Health Exchange statistics, one in four American teenagers is a binge-drinker, one in four smokes cigarettes, one in five sexually active teenage girls becomes pregnant each year, one in five teens experiences violence in a relationship and one in six is overweight or obese. Budget cuts have eliminated comprehensive health courses in many public high schools, leaving teenagers to face these health risks unprepared and alone. In 2003, Louise Davis and Katy Dion co-founded Peer Health Exchange to aid teenagers in high schools that lacked health education to make healthy decisions regarding sex, drugs, drinking and more issues that are growing concerns in the United States.

Peer Health Exchange trains college students in four urban areas (New York City, Boston, San Francisco Bay area and Chicago) and prepares them to teach one of twelve workshops. The college students travel to different schools in their city, holding workshops in the homeroom periods of ninth grade classes. The workshops are interactive and easy to comprehend for ninth graders and the benefits of the peer education are far-reaching.



In observing a session on sexual assault and rape, I noticed that the initial questions asked of the students revealed the underlying need for such a program. About 80 percent of the students responded “yes” when asked if sexual assault was ever the survivor’s fault. Over the course of an hour of acted-out scenarios and question-answer sessions with the group leaders, each student came to understand that this belief was unequivocally false. After the session, I asked Lloyd, a 14-year-old from the class who had answered “yes” to the question, what he learned from the class. He responded, “That rape is never the girl’s fault. You have to ask if it’s okay, and that if she doesn’t actually say ‘yes’, it means ‘no.’”

Reaching out to those in need

A team of college kids wakes up before sunrise to prepare for the day. Breakfast is served at a local church and then they’re off to work. Soon, you can hear the sound of hammers pounding on a roof; kids laughing as they run into each other’s linked arms, playing red rover; a relieved sigh as a client walks out of the thrift store with bags of free food and clothing. These are just a few sounds you would hear if you spent twelve weeks at Appalachian Outreach, an organization located in the Appalachian Mountains of Jefferson City, Tennessee.

Appalachian Outreach was founded in 1984 in association with Carson-Newman College. From its beginning as a home repair organization, it has expanded to serve people who are in need of food, clothing, linens and household items. An estimated 600 clients came in and out of Appalachian Outreach in June 2009.

In order to help these 600 clients plus the home repair clients, Appalachian Outreach hires college students to work for twelve weeks. Some students are from Tennessee’s Carson-Newman, and others come from states such as Illinois and Mississippi. Many of them work on home repair projects for the summer, including roofing, tiling and landscape.

Michelle Shackleford, then a Southern Missouri student who has since transferred to Carson-Newman student, didn’t know much about home repair but was excited to learn. She wanted to make an impact on someone’s life. “I was given more opportunities to love people as they are, as we were in their homes and spending more time with them, getting to know and love them as people,” Shackleford says.

15 Years

This photo essay was submitted by photographer Simon Sticker

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Communities Given the Chance to Fly

A group of women opened a clinic in Kenya this year. The clinic belongs solely to those women, and the clinic serves approximately 20,000 Kenyans entirely under their direction.

After one of the women died of cholera, funeral services were provided for the family by an organization called Give Us Wings, which had worked with the women for a number of years to get the clinic off the ground. After speaking with the widower, the organization helped with funeral costs and paid for the coffin. If the family had paid for the coffin themselves, it would have depleted nearly all of their resources.

Because her mother was deceased, the daughter of the family would now have to spend hours each day collecting water, causing her grades in school to fall. Without education, she could not hope for a better future. Give Us Wings hired help for the family so that the children could stay in school and focus on their studies, relieving them of the burden of domestic duties.

Kurdish Refugee & IDP Camps

I set out this summer to look at refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. What I found were Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers from Turkey, Syria and Iran, and internally displaced Kurds from Mosul. I saw everything from a youth group practicing traditional dance to a six-year-old boy that has been addicted to smoking for two years. But most of all, I experienced a wide range of people, living in hard situations, but with attitudes towards life that have left me deeply invested in the future of the people in these camps.

Makhmoor Refugee Camp

Makhmoor, home to around 11,000 Turkish refugees, was actually nicer than most villages that I have visited in the region. After a short drive through the dust-filled town of Makhmoor, about 45 minutes from Erbil, my translator, Leo, and I came upon the large security barriers that formed a maze before coming to the first guard. I promptly got yelled at for taking a photo of the UNHCR flag at the gate, which led to a traditional Kurdish yelling match in which I can never quite tell who is winning. Until, invariably, someone will turn to me and say "OK. Everything is OK."

After talking with the director, I met a camp representative in a large, mostly empty room -- a few couches, a hole in the wall for the air conditioner, and only two things on lined the wall: a UNHCR flag and a picture of the former PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. It is clear where the inhabitants’ allegiances lie.

The representative took us to visit the home of Siso Saleem, a 55-year-old father of eight. Sensing my surprise about the number of kids, he responded with, "We must have many children. Some to end up in Turkish prisons, some to join the PKK, some to be educated, and some to take care of the home."

Documenting Voluntourism (Part I of II)

The Positive Footprints initiative was created by World Nomads, a travel insurance company. World Nomad’s website explains, “We believe there is a moral obligation to give a little back to the communities in which we travel. The Footprints Network was founded as an online philanthropy project to do just that.” The Footprints Network raises money for community development projects which Positive Footprints documents.

In this episode, documentary producer Trent O'Donnell was sent to Kenya to capture the essence of a World Expeditions voluntourism trip. He headed into the heart of the country with 16 other travelers who built desks, refurbished classrooms and assisted in installing a new water tank.

This is a story of traveling with a purpose and the effect it has on all people involved.

Positive Footprints - Kenya from WorldNomads on Vimeo.

Positive Footprints
Footprints Network
World Expeditions

Ethiopia shakes down its Minnesota refugees

This is a cross-post from Twin Cities Daily Planet by Douglas McGill

Immigrants to Minnesota from eastern Ethiopia are being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom payments to support an Ethiopian security force that tortures and kills thousands of innocent Ethiopians.

Under an extortion scheme run by the Ethiopian army, soldiers in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia abduct men, women and teenage boys and girls, holding them without charge in one of scores of military jails in the region, which borders Somalia.

Knowing that many Ogaden families have relatives who live in Minnesota, the Ethiopian army tells the prisoners’ families that their loved ones can be freed upon payment of ransoms ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

Hating to pay the money but having no other choice, the Minnesota refugees empty their personal bank accounts and pass the hat to raise ransoms to release their husbands, wives, sons, daughters and friends from overcrowded jails where torture, rape, beatings and killings are common.

Destruction of Villages

“It is a booming business for the Ethiopian army,” said Mohamed, a Minnesota school teacher who immigrated from the Ogaden in 1993. “It happens every day in the Ogaden, and every day someone in Minnesota is sending money.”

Mohamed and other Ogaden immigrants quoted in this story declined to give their full names for fear that their families and friends living in the Ogaden would be jailed, tortured or killed in retribution for their openness.

In recent years, one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises has unfolded silently in the Ogaden region, where a vicious counter-insurgency campaign by the Ethiopian government has wiped out scores of villages, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced tens of thousands or more to refugee camps in Ethiopia and northern Kenya.

About 5,000 Ogaden refugees have found their way to Minnesota, which has one of the largest refugee populations from the Ogaden crisis in the world. They Ogaden refugees in Minnesota are settled mainly in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Willmar, St. Cloud and Faribault.