Progress Report #1

The refugee group me on Sunday, September 9th at the Wells Library to discuss its campaign. First, we determined which countries we will study and present to the class. We chose Cuba, North Korea, Burma, and Vietnam. Since there are right members in our group, each of the four countries has two people researching it together. John and Kerri and researching Cuba; Michael and Katie are researching Burma; Tae and Sung are researching North Korea, and Ian and Hyun and researching Vietnam. The plan for our presentation to the class is to have an intro that will last about five minutes in which we will discuss who refugees are. What characterizes them, and from what are refugees fleeing? Then, each pair will present for about 15 minutes. Each pair will make a power point and will find a video clip or some other multimedia component to show. Our resources will primarily be international newspapers, databases, and YouTube; though, each pair may find other sources, too, which will be included in the bibliography. The questions we seek to answer for ourselves and for the class are as follows: What causes refugees to flee? Are the political or religious reasons? To where do refugees choose to go and why? How to the refugees adapt to the new countries in which they live? Do they assimilate, or do they keep the culture of their homelands? And finally, what can we, college students at IU Bloomington, do to help these refugees? What charities or other organizations exist to help refugees, and how can all students get involved? For the next three weeks, these are the questions we will answer before we convene to discuss our second progress report.