In this bonus episode, Grace Nuri, the artist behind the beautiful graffiti you encounter at our centers, reflects upon the significance of this community project. 

The Community Art Project first started in the summer of 2023 and saw the completion of several outstanding mural pieces in both our centers. More recently, Grace came back to Amman to visit the city and her family and decided to develop the Community Art Project further following talks with the community about how there was a need for more representation, especially women’s representation.

Written and hosted by Grace Nuri 
Edited by Francesca Maria Lorenzini

Season 2 (2024): Episode 7, "Community Empowerment"

Many of our recent episodes have focused on policy…. Good policy, and bad policy, and the policies that need to change. But these are shifts that might take generations, and in the meantime, refugee communities don’t have the luxury of waiting. 

For our final episode of Season 2, we bring our attention back to Jordan. We hear from Ricky and Hassan, the co-founders of a critical, anti-racist English as a Second Language program run by refugee-led organization Sawiyan, a partner of CRP. In the face of slow political change, how can community programs like Sawiyan’s equip people to be their own advocates?

Background reading

Season 2 (2024): Episode 6, “The Border Inside: Notes from Belgrade and El Paso”

It might seem strange for a podcast about displacement in the Middle East to suddenly pivot to two other continents. But that’s exactly what we’re doing here! In Belgrade, Serbia, Zach talks to his friend Zaki, who left Afghanistan to seek safety in Europe. And from El Paso, TX, USA, Zach speaks to Jesús de la Torre and Aimée Santillán of the HOPE Border Institute to reflect on what’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The point of this journey is to see how migration policies around the world are interconnected. Too many governments have bought into the same erroneous philosophy: the idea that a security response can answer humanitarian and political questions. How can we rethink migration, and our policy approach to it, so that displaced people can restart their lives again, meaningfully and on their own terms? 

Background reading

Season 2 (2024): Episode 5, “On the Other Side of Waiting: The Long Path to Resettlement with Kitti Murray.”

Most people registered as refugees in Jordan hope that, one day, they will be accepted for resettlement to countries in North America and Europe, where there are more viable paths to work and citizenship. However, last year, just 1.4% of Jordan’s refugees were accepted for resettlement. The laborious, time-consuming, and retraumatizing process can take years, and in the meantime, the uncertainty is enough to drive anyone mad. 

In this episode, we talk to Kitti Murray, the CEO and founder of Refuge Coffee, which provides job training for newly resettled refugees in Clarkston, GA, USA, once described as “the most diverse square mile in America.” We ask Kitti: what lies beyond resettlement, in the early days of one’s new life? 

Background reading: 

Season 2 (2024): Episode 4, “Refugees and Jordan’s Economy with Shaddin al-Masri.” To survive in today’s world, you need money. And to make money, you need a job. But this is not a simple proposition for Jordan’s 700,000 refugees, the majority of whom face exclusion from Jordan’s formal economy.

In this episode, we talk to Shaddin al-Masri, a PhD student at Danube University Krems whose research focuses on nationality-based discrimination in humanitarian aid and labor market integration for refugees. We break down Jordan’s kafala sponsorship system, its uneasy relationship with refugees, and certain initiatives that have created limited paths for refugees to work.

Given the academic nature of this episode, we hope the reading list below will help you get caught up to speed.

Background reading:

Season 2 (2024): Episode 3, “Jordan and the ‘One Refugee Approach.’” Jordan's refugee response actors say their work has been guided by the ‘One Refugee Approach.” That is, a refugee is a refugee, deserving of the same rights no matter where they’re from. But is this the case in practice? 

We talk to two members of CRP’s community from Sudan and Yemen, who tell us about the challenges faced by minority refugees in Jordan amid a landscape that has been defined by the Syrian crisis. We also hear their stories of perseverance, and how they’ve used the lessons learned from these experiences to become leaders in their communities. 

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Season 2 (2024): Episode 2, “Refuge, Home, and Memory in Hashemi Shamali.” Our second episode of the season discusses CRP’s home neighborhood of Hashemi Shamali in East Amman, which has long been a refuge for people fleeing from other countries. 

We speak to two members of the community who arrived from Syria, 40 years apart, about their lives in Hashemi, memories of their old country, and prospects for the future. 

Background reading:

Catch our next episode, focused on Jordan’s minority refugee groups, on February 7, 2024!

Season 2 (2024): Episode 1, “The Waiting Station.” After a five year hiatus, the Collateral Repair Podcast is back! This season, we’ll be exploring the lived experiences of refugees in Jordan and the policies affecting them, amid the wider context of global displacement.

In our introductory episode, we talk to Ali, a CRP colleague and member of Amman’s Iraqi community, and Amanda Lane, CRP’s executive director. We begin to understand the constrictive environment for refugees in Jordan, and hear how community members channel their skills and experiences through CRP to combat these conditions.

Background reading:

Look out for our next episode on January 24, 2024!

ARCHIVE Season 1 (2019): The Mandaeans are a small ethnoreligious group who were living exclusively in the south of Iraq and Iran until they recently had to flee their homelands. Today we will be looking into who they are, why they left, and a snippet of their beliefs.

ARCHIVE Season 1 (2019). In this episode we talk about winter. Munah, an Iraqi refugee who came to Jordan with her two sons a few years ago, talks to us about her experiences of trying to settle in a new country during winter, and the stresses it induced in her family. Following that, we talk to a team of mental health professionals from Médicine Sans Frontières about mental health challenges refugees suffer, which are exacerbated during the winter months.