Ahead of World Refugee Day, Local Group Hosting Movie Screening at Library
Event Will be Wednesday at 6:00 pm
STAMFORD — With World Refugee Day fast approaching, a Stamford non-profit is partnering with the Ferguson Library and a New Haven non-profit to present a timely film. The event is open to the public and will be held this Wednesday, June 18, at 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm.
In collaboration with the Library and Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), an Elm City-based non-profit that helps refugees and other displaced people establish new lives, Stamford Interfaith Refugee Settlement (SIRS) will convene a movie screening of “I Come From Away: An Immigrant in Maine” in the Third Floor Auditorium at the Library’s main branch DiMattia Building downtown.
First released in February 2022, the film is about an hour long. It focuses on “an intimate look inside the immigrant community in Portland, Maine,” according to the Library, “as told by Nyamuon Nguany Machar, who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in 1995, and David Zwalita Mota, an asylum seeker who arrived in the U.S. in 2019.”
In a Facebook post, SIRS said that “[a] panel after the screening will give a brief update on the refugee situation and share some local refugee perspectives.”
The movie screening is free, but registration is required and available here.
Immigrants represent 22% of Fairfield County’s population, according to IRIS, which makes it the highest percentage of any county in the state. Additionally, The Connecticut Mirror reported in February that:
“Connecticut welcomed 1,032 refugees in the 2024 fiscal year, nearly twice as many as the 543 refugees in 2014.
But the increase hasn’t been steady. After peaking at 819 in 2016, the number of refugees admitted dropped steeply. Fewer than 100 per year arrived during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
After being founded in January 2016, SIRS works “to welcome and resettle a refugee family by providing advocacy and support in Stamford as they work toward self-sufficiency to become productive members of our community.” To learn more about SIRS, visit their website here.
World Refugee Day, which is commemorated annually on June 20, was established on June 20, 2001 by the United Nations to recognize the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. This year’s theme is “Solidarity with Refugees,” which you can get details of here.
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