The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority who have lived in Myanmar for many generations. Despite that, they are not recognized as an official ethnic group and have been denied citizenship, making them the world’s largest stateless population. Following serious human rights violations and violent military crackdowns in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in August 2017, over 750,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh and joined the previous waves of Rohingya refugees who fled the country in the 1970s and 1990s. Today, nearly one million Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh. A majority of them live in the Cox’s Bazar region, which is home to Kutupalong, the world’s largest refugee camp (UNHCR, 2023).
The Pandemic and How it Fueled a Tutoring Evolution
It has been 18 months since the pandemic forced us to shut down our regular operations. During that time of panic and confusion, the previous Education Director and her team were able to come up with our online tutoring format. Within 2 months she had set up a website, a google classroom, as well as a tutoring committee in order to launch our tutoring services in a safe and effective manner. At the time, I was a freshman. I had joined GRMR just 2 months before and fell in love with the activities and the culture. The best part of working with GRMR, was meeting the students, and getting to know their different personalities. The community was so lively…
The Role of Art in the Refugee Crisis
There are few mediums more expressive and universal than art. As a newly minted Art History major, my experiences with art historical classes, resources, and media have helped me realize that the study of art is really just the study of people. The study of art in and of itself is fruitless; to learn about art is to learn about people, their cultures, and their stories. And that is why I think it is of critical importance to interact with art created by refugees. Studying the pieces of refugee artists and supporting their work not only spreads the word about the refugee crisis and its impacts; it humanizes and individualizes the crisis in a way that few other forms of media are able to. In this post, I’ll be sharing the works of some contemporary refugee artists as well as…