World Refugee Day is a day of celebration designated by the United Nations to honor refugees around the globe. The international day is always June 20, and Austin’s celebration falls on a Saturday in June and is organized by the Austin Refugee Roundtable, a group of organizations and individuals working to make Austin a welcoming place for all, especially refugees, of which iACT is a founding and leading member. This year, we hosted our event on June 13th.
If you haven’t already, we commend Lubna Zeidan’s wonderful Dose of Hope reflecting on our celebration of refugees’ resilience and contributions to the life of the city: https://mailchi.mp/interfaithtexas/the-daily-dose-of-hope-306
To further celebrate World Refugee Day, we also recorded a conversation with three people who came to Austin as refugees, which we highly recommend:
Across religious traditions, showing hospitality to strangers is a consistent and insistent moral teaching. Welcoming refugees makes for a better Austin and Central Texas!