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Not Really Strangers: Daily Summaries Delivered
by USA for UNHCR
Discover just how connected the refugee experience is to our everyday lives, and to the social issues that matter to us most. Join host Suzanne Ehlers, Executive Director and CEO of USA for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, as she and her eclectic guests share personal stories and frontline insights. We’re more connected than we may think.
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- 2 days ago19 min
What Does it Mean to be a Stranger?
In this special episode, host Suzanne Ehlers revisits one of Not Really Strangers' most enduring questions: what does the word stranger mean to you? Drawing from each conversation across the past two seasons, you will hear a collage-style episode featuring artists, advocates, business leaders, and more — each of them a refugee, the child of a refugee, or someone who has felt called to work alongside refugees. Together, their voices explore how the idea of a stranger shapes the way we move thr...
- 1 weeks ago41 min
How Emma’s Torch is Building Community, One Kitchen at a Time
Recorded on location at Emma's Torch — a restaurant and culinary training center for refugees in Brooklyn, NY with locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area — Suzanne sits down with staff members Kira O'Brien and Alexander Harris and alumnus Giorgi Tabukashvili to explore what home, belonging, and hospitality mean when displacement is part of the story. Now in its tenth year, Emma's Torch runs an 11-week, fully paid culinary training program for refugees, asylees, and other newcomers....
- 2 weeks ago31 min
“It’s a Power Question”: On Wakanda, Funding Change, and Compassion Across Oceans with Global Leader Ada Williams Prince
In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers sits down with global leader and major sci-fi fan Ada Williams Prince to discuss how her career spanning multiple continents has shaped the way she thinks about the best way to fund social change. Ada shares how she first came to feel a personal connection to the issue of forced displacement and why it’s not just a humanitarian crisis – it is also a political crisis, a gender crisis, and a climate crisis. Ada also makes a compelling...
- 3 weeks ago30 min
Building Better Futures for Refugees: The Power of Education
In this episode of Not Really Strangers, Suzanne Ehlers sits down with two UNHCR DAFI scholarship recipients and leaders of the Tertiary Refugee Student Network (TRSN) — Monicah Malith, a law graduate from South Sudan now completing her Advocates Training Program in Nairobi, and Krista Rivas, a Nicaraguan architecture and international relations student finishing her final semester in Mexico City. Together, they explore what home means when you've been displaced, the unexpected ways education...
- May 14, 202639 min
Grit, Gathering and Going for It: Maryam Banikarim on Living Life Wherever You Find Yourself
In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers sits down with Maryam Banikarim, an Emmy Award-winning storyteller, community builder, and host of The Messy Parts podcast, for a conversation that moves from the streets of Chelsea to the streets of Tehran, and back again. Maryam, who fled Iran as a child and arrived in the United States in the middle of the hostage crisis, reflects on what it means to build a sense of home when home is not a fixed place. She shares how New York Ci...
- May 7, 202627 min
From Assumption to Curiosity: Susanna Pollack on Immersive Media and the Distance Between Us
Susanna Pollack, President of Games for Change and a cross-sector leader with over 25 years of experience in traditional and interactive media, joins host Suzanne Ehlers for a conversation that bridges virtual worlds and lived realities. From Clouds Over Sidra — the UN's landmark VR film set inside a Syrian refugee camp — to the immersive theater of The Jungle, the award-winning text-based game Bury Me, My Love, and Minecraft Education's use in displaced communities, Susanna illustrates how g...
- Apr 30, 202627 min
Dance or Die: Ahmad Joudeh on Statelessness, Belonging, and the Body as Home
In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers sits down with internationally acclaimed ballet dancer, choreographer, author, and humanitarian Ahmad Joudeh. Born stateless in 1990 in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Ahmad carries a story that is both extraordinary and deeply representative of the millions of people around the world who exist without nationality, without a passport, and without a country that claims them as its own. When Syria's civil war broke ou...
- Apr 23, 202638 min
Caring in Crisis and Responding to Hate: Dr. Suzanne Barakat’s Story
In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers welcomes her "name twin" — Dr. Suzanne Barakat, physician, humanitarian, and a leading voice on refugee health, asylum medicine, and countering Islamophobia. Dr. Barakat, who is from North Carolina, traces her connection to the refugee experience back to her own roots: from summers in Syria and then two years of high school there, to watching as an adult as the Syrian crisis forced her her extended family— who once all lived o...
About Not Really Strangers
Discover just how connected the refugee experience is to our everyday lives, and to the social issues that matter to us most. Join host Suzanne Ehlers, Executive Director and CEO of USA for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, as she and her eclectic guests share personal stories and frontline insights. We’re more connected than we may think.
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