Amanda Audo travels to a few miles to a Lansing church each Tuesday to help The Lost Boys, a group of Sudanese refugees who have spent most of their lives traveling to get to Michigan.
The pre-vet sophomore and about 90 other Residential Option in Arts and Letters students help tutor, play sports, do crafts and chat with about 130 refugees in their late teens and early twenties.
“Some of the boys that are in high school are not keeping up with their subjects so we are going to try to help them,” Audo said.
“(On Sunday) we had traditional Thanksgiving food, we sat and talked about differences, we told them about our traditions and traced their hands and made turkeys.”
A $200,000 grant received last month from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement will allow MSU, Lutheran Social Services of Michigan and Catholic Social Services of Lansing to continue their work of acclimating the refugees to mid-Michigan for the next year and a half.
Audo said the groups also hear speakers on American culture and laws and show each other how to cook their native country’s food.
“I like learning about their way of life and their country, it is so different and what they went through to get here is amazing,” Audo said.
The refugees are known as The Lost Boys because they’re part of nearly 10,000 children who fled their native Sudan in the early 1990s during an on-going civil war.
Many were only 8 or 9 years-old, have never been reunited with their families and until late last year lived in Kenyan refugee camps. The U.S. State Department and United Nations have relocated them to midsize cities such as Lansing and Grand Rapids.
Tom Luster, family and child ecology professor, is researching how the refugees are acclimating to Michigan, but he has made a more personal connection too - he mentors one of the The Lost Boys.
“He has become another family member,” he said. “Refugee services linked them up with mentors, American friends, to help them do things like shopping at Meijer and doing laundry.”
Luster said he hopes his research will help the agencies that are assisting the refugees better serve especially in dealing with trauma. MSU Outreach, which coordinates MSU’s involvement with community groups, said the grant is unique because it allows preventative measures to be taken to ensure a smooth transition into American culture.
Annette Abrams, director of MSU Outreach Partnerships, said the Tuesday night meetings allow The Lost Boys to maintain the community that they developed living in the camps.
“This grant will allow us to add music therapy, art therapy and other forms of creative expression that they need to express what they have been through and are going through,” Abrams said.
Abrams said counselors will be on hand to interpret these expressions and provide any assistance if necessary. She said although many of the refugees are making good transitions into jobs and school they are still tentative to speak face to face about the trauma they encountered in Africa.
“We want in a much more delicate way to unload some of that,” she said.
