Refugee mother shares family’s journey to the U.S. in powerful animated video

Layla’s journey has been anything but easy.

She’s a refugee from the eastern Somali Region of Ethiopia, which she and her husband fled because of conflict and persecution in the early 2000s. They eventually found a temporary home in Saudi Arabia, where they had children and stayed for seven years — before Layla’s husband was deported in 2010. Her employers helped her family escape to Syria.

“I began to start my new life,” Layla says. “My kids had a little education at home.”

But before she could truly settle, civil war erupted in Syria, contributing to one of the worst refugee crises of our time. Layla made the difficult decision to once again flee the country where her family lived, walking for two to three days to the Turkish border, where she ultimately learned of her husband’s death back home. Read more…

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