Week 2

Friday June 5 - Friday June 12

This week I worked at REP's Merton Street location and spent a lot of time with the refugee children who attend REP. Several students at Rhodes College held an art camp at REP for four weeks. The first two weeks were for students in elementary school, and the second two weeks were for students in middle school. All the art work was shown at an art show hosted by a professional art gallery on July 18th. At the art show, major items, such as the one seen below, were auctioned, and the proceeds went to REP. 

This week was the second week, so I was working with the children in elementary school. One activity that became an every-day routine required everyone to draw in each others sketchbooks. The Rhodes students gave each child a small booklet of blank pages. In the activity, everyone sat a a table and drew on a page in their booklet until a timer rang. Then, everyone passed their books to the person on their right. Every person used the same page so that the children could build off of the previous person drawing. This particular activity was so great because all the children were engaged with one another and with the leaders. During this time, I came to know some of the refugees rather well. I found that all the refugee children spoke perfect English and were so settled into American culture that, had I not been at REP, I would not have thought them refugees at all. 

The sketchbook activity

Drawing snowmen and snow-women

Week 1

Tuesday June 3 - Thursday June 5

I am interning at Refugee Empowerment Program this summer. Many refugees move to Memphis every year because it is home to a World Relief resettlement agency. REP serves 200-400 of these refugees, mostly from Africa and Asia, by helping them adjust to a different culture and giving them the tools to succeed in their new home. The goal of REP is "to empower the refugee community by encouraging, educating, and equipping individual refugees, refugee families, and the refugee community."

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I worked at the REP office doing communications work. Through sites like hootesuite, I wrote and scheduled twitter posts. REP is trying to up its public relations game, and utilizing social media is its main strategy. On twitter, REP is getting word out about global news regarding refugees as well as local news and news about the organization itself. Also, I constructed a template for REP's monthly newsletter which is sent which is sent to subscribers via email to keep them up to date on what REP is doing in the community. The office is located in the Memphis Leadership Foundation building which is at a different location than where REP actually works with refugees, so for the first several days, I was not able to interact with the children REP are working with this summer.