wfn.org | Resettled refugees featured in Million Minutes for Peace Campaign video

["Lesley Crosson" <lcrosson@churchworldservice.org>]

>Church World Service
>475 Riverside Drive
>New York, New York 10015
>(212) 87--2676

>For Immediate Release

Editors:  Photos to accompany story can be downloaded at
http://www.churchworldservice.org/media/

Resettled refugees featured in Million Minutes for Peace Campaign
video

Somali refugees resettled to Pennsylvania by Church World Service are
featured in a four and a half-minute “webisode” as part of  the
Odyssey Networks’ Million Minutes for Peace Campaign.

The campaign is working to collect pledges from a million people to
join in one minute of prayer for peace at noon September 21 in
observance of the United Nations International Day of Peace.  CWS is a
campaign partner.  For more information and to pledge your
participation, visit www.odysseynetworks.org.

“Prayer is a powerful thing that can bring the world peace,��
testifies Abdikani Abdi, 19, in the webisode, titled “Messengers  of
Peace - the Abdi Family” and posted in the Peace Video Festival
section of www.odysseynetworks.org.

Abdikani’s brother Suleban, 17, and their widowed mother Halima  also
are featured in the webisode.  The video also features refugee sisters
from Guinea, who tell their own story and then interview the Abdis.

After fleeing civil war and persecution in Somalia, Halima and her
children took refuge at Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya.  “We spent  our
life as refugees in Kenya, 17 years,” Abdikani said.

The Abdis - including two more brothers, Aden and Ahmed - were accepted
into the U.S. refugee program and arrived from Kenya on September 11,
2007.  They were resettled by Church World Service to Lancaster,
Pennsylvania.

“When they arrived, Aden and Abdikani were severely malnourished,  and
Ahmed had suffered nerve damage for lack of proper medical care at the
camp,” said Barbara Witmer of CWS-Lancaster.

“A lot of people in the camp (were) so hungry,” Abdikani  said. Sick and weak, he weighed 110 pounds when he arrived in the United
States.   Now he weighs 140.  As he gained weight, “I got stretch
marks,” he said.

The family relocated to Buffalo, N.Y., from Lancaster, and now lives in
Mechanicsburg, Pa., where Aden is working and Abdikani, Suleban and
Ahmed are in school.

The boys’ sister had to stay behind in Dadaab.  Halima currently  is
engaged in an intensive effort to get her daughter, now 14, here.
“Every time I see her picture, I’m crying,” Halima  said.

Odyssey Networks is the nation's largest coalition of Jewish, Christian
and Muslim faith groups dedicated to media production, and distribution.
 Odyssey Networks is a service of the National Interfaith Cable
Coalition, Inc., established in 1987.

Contact

Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, media@churchworldservice.org Carol Fouke-Mpoyo, (212) 870-2673, cfouke@churchworldservice.org

Photo Caption: Abdikani Abdi (left), older brother Aden (right) and younger brothers
Suleban and Ahmed (foreground) with their mother Halima.  CWS/Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, photo.