Congratulations to one of the Summer 2020 Grant recipients Michelle Li. Here is how Michelle plans to spend her summer, in her own words:
According to the United Nations, an unprecedented 70.8 million people were displaced by the end of 2018, double the number 20 years ago. And unbeknownst to most Yale students, Connecticut (CT) is the home to thousands of refugees, coming from across the globe; over 5,000 have arrived since 2009. In particular, almost half of all refugees are children, and many do not have the English language ability to integrate into US schools and be educated. Local organizations such as Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) and Refugee and Immigrant Services & Empowerment (RISE) are actively trying to address this through the creation of community-based and English tutoring programs. However, there is a lack of support as oftentimes there are not enough students who sign up to volunteer or even know about the crisis and such programs designed to systematically address them.
As a starting point, I envision my project will take the form of an interactive website that allows students (and US citizens in general) to learn more about the refugee crisis. Amongst the various features on my site, I want to design insightful visualizations of data from the UNHCR’s Statistics Database that will reveal the many states that displaced people come from and their current destinations in our country and abroad. In addition, I plan on consulting the Program on Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses (PRFDHR) in order to gain a deeper understanding and account for the complexities of the refugee crisis. For additional resources, I plan on consulting the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants. Lastly, if possible, I’d like to collect stories from community members who are, or work with refugees in order to add another dimension to the data.