St. Thomas junior Mohamed Malim recently founded DreamRefugee, a nonprofit that uses storytelling to combat negative attitudes and change the refugee narrative.

DreamRefugee is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has only existed for about a month, but Malim and other St. Thomas students involved are hopeful for the future of the organization.

“We’ve been getting a lot of support and love from the community so far, you know, it’s been successful,” Malim said.

For Malim, starting DreamRefugee was also a part of his own personal background.

“I myself am a refugee, you know. My parents came here in 1999 during the civil war back in Somalia,” Malim said.

Malim was inspired to start DreamRefugee with a goal to combat xenophobia, which is a fear or dislike of people from other counties.

“The idea came from everything that was going on with our current president, with how he portrayed refugees as bad people or not hardworking people who aren’t contributing to society,” Malim said. “That motivated me and that got me to start a nonprofit trying to change that thinking.”

According to Amin Mohamoud, first-year and vice president of the organization, DreamRefugee was started as a result of the Fowler Business Concept Challenge here at St. Thomas.

“[Malim] came up to me about having an idea about helping Somali refugees, Syrian refugees,” Mohamoud said. “We would have to come up with a product for the business concept challenge…We realized that wasn’t going to be beneficial. So we started focusing more outwards on changing people’s minds.”

One refugee story Malim highlighted was about Sabrina Syef, a local henna artist.

“We are telling her story and pushing it out there like, hey, look at her, she’s really successful and she’s a refugee,” Malim said.

As DreamRefugee moves forward, Malim and Mohamoud hope to implement a mentorship program so that first generation refugees may get hands-on work experience.

“There are a lot of refugee engineers, doctors, teachers,” Mohamoud said. “There are a lot of people with those ambitions, too … We just want to make sure we can give them the tools to make them successful.”

DreamRefugee is only a month-old organization, and Malim hopes to see it expand.

“Right now it’s small, we meet at St. Thomas twice a week and talk about our progress,” Malim said. “My mom always told me don’t ever forget about your roots, don’t ever forget about your struggles, you know. Success will come.”

More information about DreamRefugee can be found at www.dreamrefugee.org

Maya Shelton-Davies can be reached at shel1181@stthomas.edu.