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The name “Asha” in many languages means “A Place of Hope, a Future, or Life”. In 2010 my life was forever changed after meeting a young lady who had escaped war in Somalia who’s name was Asha. During my volunteer time with our local resettlement agency, I was asked to make an in home visit with a refugee client who was unable to attend our English classes due to some kind of disability that was not initially disclosed to me. I was from well to do country suburbs and had not typically roamed the poverty strickened city steets of Memphis, TN, but I was not exactly ignorant to poverty. Several previous trips to far away poor villages in the most remote jungle lands of Indonesia had quite possibly began to prepare my heart for what was to come in my own city. At age ten, Asha and her seven year old brother became the parents of their older sisters two infant children after their sister passed away giving birth to the youngest. Not long after, civil war broke out and forced this little family to run for safety towards Ethiopian refugee camps. Neighbors and Asha’s family quickly aboarded a truck leaving behind all of their posessions and many of their loved ones who were not yet able to leave. Before arriving to Ethiopia, the truck flipped over in an accident. Asha’s infants and brother were thrown out of the truck. They were bruised and scratched up but okay. Asha, however, found herself pinned underneath the truck. Asha survived this terrible accident but was never able to have the surgery needed to repair her legs. For ten years Asha walked on her hands and knees in the refugee camps of Ethiopia raising her two nieces with her little brother. When I met her, she was just twenty years old and that is the age that she was when she and her family were blessed to come to America to start their life over. She was still crawling around on her hands and knees with no suitable wheel chair. She was unable to reach the stove to cook for her family. She could not get into the shower easily. This upset me as I saw the major gaps in the resettlement system and it pushed my heart to start an organization thinking of the many refugees with similar stories and hardships to Asha’s. Asha introduced me to so many other local persecuted people who had gained refugee status now trying to start their life anew in my city but who faced serious challenges. I began giving to this family and others like hers realizing just how blessed I was to be able to freely give. My own giving, sadly, was simply not going to be enough. I felt as though I must do something more. With Asha’s permission and encouragment, I founded Asha’s Refuge in 2010 gaining our 501(C)3 nonprofit status in 2012. The organization works to help educate, mentor and encourage newcomers. For more information on our rather new organizations story, mission and vision can be found by visiting http://www.ashasrefuge.org.

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