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Local high school student raising money for refugees

Posted on April 1, 2010April 8, 2010 by Staff

BY SUSAN DICKSON
Staff Writer

When Chapel Hill High School student Maddy Kameny traveled to Thailand in 2008, she spent a month volunteering at a small medical clinic. Then 14 years old, she stayed about an hour away from where the rest of her family was staying so she could do service work.

Two years later, Kameny finds herself working with refugees in her own community, raising money for young Thais and Burmese to attend summer camp this year.

Southern Orange County has seen an influx of Karen refugee families since they were granted political asylum by the State Department in summer 2007. Many refugees had been living in Mae La refugee camp in northern Thailand after fleeing the militaristic government of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

Kameny said her work in the Thai medical clinic became her “favorite part of the trip,” and she returned from Thailand more aware of the local refugee community. About a year ago, Kameny started tutoring two refugees from Burma, aged 7 and 10.

“Just going to their apartment every week, I was seeing that they don’t have a lot,” she said. “They have help from churches a lot of the time, but they don’t have furniture or anything like that.”

Kameny knew refugee children struggling to learn English in school could benefit from more interaction with English-speaking children their own age and thought summer camp would be a good opportunity. She then worked with Carolina Friends School to arrange for eight refugees, aged 7 to 13, to attend the school’s day camps.

The refugees have never been to summer camp, and most of them haven’t been in the country for much more than a year.

So far, Kameny has raised about $450, but she needs at least $1,100 more to send the kids to camp, because transportation is often an issue for many of the local refugee families, and she hopes to arrange for vans to transport the children to and from camp.

“Even if they could afford [camp], which they can’t, they don’t have any transportation,” she said.

The children will be broken up into different age groups for a variety of themed camps, including story art, which focuses on storytelling through dramatic and visual art; summer sports, which will cover the basic rules and techniques of basketball, Frisbee, soccer and indoor gym games; comic design, where campers will create their own comic book characters and stories; and earth circle, which will focus on connecting to and intersecting with the outdoors, nature and earth through art, storytelling, sharing and social activities.

“They’ll be together during lunch, and at the end of the day I’m trying to get them together to talk about their days,” Kameny said.

After camp, Kameny hopes to continue her work with refugees. Her experience in the medical clinic in Thailand sparked an interest in public health, and she wants to learn more about refugee public health in particular.

Kameny is accepting donations until June 10. To make a donation, send a check to Carolina Friends School, 4809 Friends School Road, Durham, N.C., 27705. Checks should be made out to the Carolina Friends School with “Camp to Camp scholarship fund” in the memo line. For more information, contact Kameny at saveburma1994 (at) gmail (dot) com

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