Refugee Realities

In this podcast, Yujia Zhang invites two women, Nadia and Fatima, to talk about their stories as both refugees and social workers in Lebanon. Nadia, a third generation Palestinian refugee, lives in the Beqaa Valley. Currently, she is the director of Manara centre of the Lighthouse Peace Initiative, a NGO offering English and art training to refugee students. Fatima, a successful businesswoman in Damascus, became a refugee in 2013 due to Syrian war and fled to Beirut. In 2019, she founded her own social enterprise making embroidery. Yujia sits down to discuss their different living experience as refugees, to hear them share inspiring stories from their work, and how their work has impacted the lives of other refugees.

Show Notes

In this podcast, Yujia Zhang invites two women, Nadia and Fatima, to talk about their stories as both refugees and social workers in Lebanon. Nadia, a third generation Palestinian refugee, lives in the Beqaa Valley. Currently, she is the director of Manara centre of the Lighthouse Peace Initiative, a NGO offering English and art training to refugee students. Fatima, a successful businesswoman in Damascus, became a refugee in 2013 due to Syrian war and fled to Beirut. In 2019, she founded her own social enterprise making embroidery. Yujia sits down to discuss their different living experience as refugees, to hear them share inspiring stories from their work, and how their work has impacted the lives of other refugees.  
 
Bio 
Yujia Zhang is an MSc student in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies. Prior to LSE, Yujia worked in the communication team of Common Future Foundation, a China-based NGO which assists refugees in Lebanon, where she had the chance to encounter the two guest speakers and their organizations featured in this podcast. During her work, she and her team worked closely with partner organizations and produced dozens of interviews and stories, a comic book, and a board game on the topic of displacement.  
 
Additional Info 
The Manara Centre, Lighthouse Peace Initiative: https://lpicorp.org/manara-center/.

What is Refugee Realities?

To help celebrate and bring awareness to Refugee Week UK 2023, we are pleased to introduce Season 3 of ‘Refugee Realities’, a podcast series created by students on the Forced Displacement and Refugees course in the Department of International Development. In the lead up to UK Refugee Week we’ll be releasing student-recorded podcasts each day. Like the course, the topics covered are eclectic.

For a complete listing of Refugee Week events or to get involved, check out the Refugee Week website at https://refugeeweek.org.uk/ and follow Refugee Week on Instagram @refugeeweekuk and on Twitter and Facebook @RefugeeWeek. In the meantime, stay tuned for the podcasts.