https://globalchildren.georgetown.edu/events/children-on-the-move
So why are you constantly trying to fit children like me into shoes when you don’t even know our size?
Before even setting your eyes on our feet, you claim to know the shoe size, type, style, and brand we need.
See this woman standing here was once a refugee child.
She was once that girl you see in UNICEF ads.
The little girl who looks so helpless, dressed in rags, maybe with flies buzzing around her.
But come on now! Not all children on the move look like that!
It always baffled me why they so often choose to portray us in such a light.
Is that all they see when they visit places with children like us?
Yes, that’s what they choose to focus on because they have a narrative to maintain.
A story to keep telling. A story for whom? A story that benefits whom?
Don’t tell me it truly benefits the girl.
How, when all you see and keep repeating is how helpless, vulnerable, weak, impoverished, and endangered she is!
It’s not that this story is untrue.
No, but it’s a half-baked narrative.
And surely, you’re aware of the danger of a single story.
With your words, you limit the girl.
With your words, you block her imagination.
With your words, you other her.
With your words, you cut her life short.
With your words, you hinder her growth.
With your words, you thwart what she could have become.
Because your words translate into policies.
And policies translate into action.
Don’t sit here and tell me her voice gets heard by perpetuating this othered narrative.
Yes, she is a child who needs protection and care.
She is exactly that! A child! A human being!
With a range of emotions, wants, desires, dreams, skills, talents!
Just like the child in your life that you dearly love.
Above all, she is an extraordinary child!
Having seen and experienced so much in such a short life, her emotional intelligence is beyond what you can fathom.
Her spirit of resilience is bigger than all your shoe sizes combined.
She has the eagerness and determination of a giraffe’s neck stretching every day to reach the best leaves on the tree.
She is constantly aware of contradictions and failures.
She has learned to accept hope and despair alike.
She has learned to accept a broken world, and she is willing to change it.
It doesn’t require a 20/20 vision to see what she can and will become.
This child is the next…
So, will you bet on her?
It doesn’t take a degree to see that the future of this country’s global position is ever-changing.
The future of the U.S. in a globalized era relies on children just like her.
It doesn’t require a PhD in human development to see her potential.
It doesn’t require a human rights degree to see that she is worth investing in—just as much as your daughter, niece, or granddaughter.
In her shoes…
The girl you view as hopeless and helpless, against all odds, is resettled in the United States of America.
The land of opportunity. The land where Heaven and Earth meet.
The land of liberty, equality, and justice for all—you say.
Yet, on her first step into the land of freedom,
stepping off the plane with the infamous IOM bag in hand,
you hear her shouting:
“I am here!”
Here to disturb your schools, strain your healthcare system, and steal your jobs.”
Yes, that step changed her life.
So many things she once found beautiful disappeared. Her community was gone, but she got her alien card! Oh, did she feel like an alien?
The ugliest of ugly ducklings for the first time in her life.
Though her child’s innocence shielded her from comprehending the rhetoric fueling the climate,
her soul screamed, “I am unwanted and hated.”
Her soul longed once again to feel the warm embrace of her friends covered in red dust back in the camp.
But since you know better—and just asking for a friend—
why should your friend care about this girl?
How does she benefit your friend and her beloved country?
Well, have your Harvard-educated economists run the numbers!
Heck, have the feds do the numbers for your friend.
It doesn’t require an economic report.
And yes, it’s true, reports can lie, because data can be manipulated.
But tell your friend to look at girls like me, who were once just helpless children on the move.
People invested in them.
It’s the selfless individuals who chipped in here and there!
It’s the institutions that occasionally do their job!
It’s the hearts that influenced those policy pens to be signed.
The only thing standing between the girls and boys on this stage today and those whose future is never accounted for is your friend.
So, will your friend bet on more girls and boys like me?
Will you work to lift them?
To provide them with an education?
To ensure they have access to opportunities? Will you?
Because they will soon inherit the broken pieces of our flawed institutions and governments.
And it will soon be their responsibility to mend what they can.
So, will you bet on her?
