A gift of hope for Yasamin

Yasamin is a friend and colleague who lives in Indonesia. She is a refugee from Afghanistan and I know her because she is the person in Indonesia who convenes classes, keeps track of students and lets me know what is going on so I can teach maths on zoom to students in Indonesia. Why, you might wonder, do refugees in Indonesia have a burning need to learn to add fractions with different denominators or deal with function notation. Well this is a story about hope.

Refugees have often had interrupted schooling as their families may have had to flee while they were children. Really, twelve year olds just want to go to school, be with their friends, play games and only worry about twelve year old stuff. Instead they may not be able to go to school due to rules about refugees, or due to safety, or due to there being no teachers or even schools.

After many long journeys, as young adults, they are bright, resilient, well organised and determined, but may still need a bit of work on their maths. Of the many many things a refugee may need to do to get a visa to a new country, passing the GED (General Education Diploma) is but a small part. but it is important to get the visa, to get a job, to access further education. That’s why learning maths is part of having hope for the future.

Yasamin and her husband (who she met in Indonesia) are at the point of being able to get Visas for Canada. This is both exciting and scary. Exciting because it is a light at the end of a long long journey, and scary because it could still all fall to pieces. Yasamin has five Canadian sponsor families to help her and her husband settle in to Canada, but the other thing they need is some money in the bank. They must come with $30,000 so the government knows they have the wherewithal to support themselves until they get jobs.

If you are still with me, it’s like this: I don’t have $30000 spare dollars. Most of us don’t. But I can give a small amount, and it would only take 600 people giving $50 to give Yasamin and her husband hope, and a bright future in a country where they will be allowed to work and study and start a new life.

I always remember the stories about the birth of Jesus both biblical and non biblical. The magi brought the big gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. But the made up stories are that the townsfolk all brought something, bread from the baker, shoes from the cobbler etc (I know, I know, just a story), even the little drummer boy gave what he could: the gift of his playing.

Please read Yasamin’s story, and think of the hope that she is feeling over the next two months, while she waits to see if she will be permitted to start a new life.