Lately, my roommate and I have been thinking about how to save the world.
Actually, we just want to help the refugees. But alas, here we are at college, and, let's face it, there aren't too many refugees running around campus. I haven't seen a single one! There are no camps, no apartments full of foreigners like I saw in Europe. We still want to help, even though we are poor college students stuck in the United States.
So we began to research. And research some more. Even during class (oops, did I just post that for the world to see?). And what have we found?
Nothing.
You either have to be there or have money to donate.
When we found out that the German ambassador was coming to our campus this week to give a little speech, we jumped on the opportunity. Germany has taken on over a million refugees in the past year, so we hoped the Honorable Peter Wittig could help us in our quest. When I got to ask him a question- you know this must be of great importance to me if I got up the nerve to talk to someone about it- this is what he said:
"There really isn't much you can do from over here. Mostly you can just be friends with refugees when you find one and help them integrate into American society so they don't make mini Syrian communities, which would isolate them."
K thanks for not really helping...
His wife was a little more helpful. She said that a lot of people offer language tutoring online to help with integration. Both my roommate and I are bilingual, so we thought this would be a great way to help from over here. Turns out, not so many people do that, especially as volunteers.
I cannot even put into words how frustrated we were about how little people, especially Americans, are doing about this crisis.
I had an idea yesterday while I was reading the Good Word. I am at a university where many people are bilingual. And if they aren't bilingual, they at least speak English, which is much more widespread among Europeans than Arabic. So why don't we set up a website where people can volunteer to help refugees learn whatever language they need via Skype? Once it's set up, we could get in contact with the refugees through city governments and schools. It's not a huge time or monetary commitment, but yet we can make a difference, even from the other side of the world. We can use our skills to bless all of God's children and make this difficult transition a tiny bit easier.
Who's with me?
PS. Here's the gem that started it all:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/refuge-from-the-storm?lang=eng
