Listen to the full report from the event here.

See more from the rally here.

A call for global unity and compassion was the focus of a speech delivered by His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama of Tibet during a visit to Minneapolis this weekend.

Listen to the full report here.

Students Ryan Wright & Essence Blakemore at Solutions in Action event

A frustrated teacher at the helm of an unruly classroom– students shouting, texting and throwing paper airplanes. Although this type of ‘disruptive behavior’ may be a reality for many teachers on a daily basis, this particular scenario was part of a role play exercise performed by students at a recent Solutions Not Suspensions event in North Minneapolis, aimed at getting Minneapolis students involved in school discipline practices.

The goal of this role play was to illustrate how inappropriate behavior might be labeled for students unfamiliar with terms such as ‘insubordination’ and ‘disruptive behavior.’ “It was really shocking for me to see, said Ivy Thomas, a freshman at Harding High School, “because I’ve seen everything that they showed up there, I just didn’t know technical terms. … Most of the terms that they were touching base on I really didn’t know, like ‘insubordination.’ I didn’t know what that was.” The role play included students working in small groups to act out “assault,” “harassment,” “extortion,” “disruptive behavior,” and four other terms used to label inappropriate behavior in the Minneapolis Public Schools Code of Conduct.

Read the full article here.

For a lot of kids, there comes a time in childhood when they just want to run away from home, over something as trivial as sibling rivalry or as serious as domestic violence. Whatever the reason, sometimes the house someone is raised in doesn’t really feel like home.

The quest for home and self-discovery are two central themes in the new documentary, These Birds Walk, which was featured for four screenings at the Intermedia Arts gallery in Minneapolis from February 6-8 and presented in partnership with the American Refugee Committee.

Read the full article here.

Honorable Shukran Gure, one of the first women elected to Parliament in Kenya, has been in Minnesota since January 23rd networking with local non-profits, non-governmental organizations and city governments to create partnerships aimed at improving the lives of the people she represents in Garissa County, Kenya.

Building maternity clinics, creating education and youth empowerment opportunities have been key goals of her foundation, which she created when she was elected to office in March 2013. She quickly realized that the government didn’t have any funds allocated to support programs for women and youth. So she decided to do something about it. “I created my foundation to mobilize resources so that I could help (the) people that I represent, women and youth,” she said.

Read the full article here.

Brian LeCuyer is a Anoka, Minnesota resident who has been working for the American Refugee Committee since December, 2013. Just nine days after he began working for ARC in Juba, South Sudan, he was evacuated to Uganda due to increasing violence. He recently returned to Juba and I spoke with him about the current conditions in the city.

Listen to the interview here.

Since the 1980s, more than 95,000 refugees have resettled in Minnesota. Sometimes during the resettlement process, only one family member is selected and the rest of the family has to stay behind. Jason Viana, Preparedness and International Services Manager at the Northern Minnesota Region of the American Red Cross, says that this leads to many refugees becoming separated from their families.

To help people find their families, The American Red Cross offers a free service called Restoring Family Links. The program is designed to help someone reconnect with their family across international lines after a conflict, disaster or humanitarian situation has separated them. Since the American Red Cross is just one of 189 national Red Cross or Red Crescent societies around the world, the organization has a vast number of channels that they can use to help reunite families. Restoring Family Links offers several ways to help reconnect families. They offer tracing services, messaging services, and will also conduct health and welfare checks on a member of someone’s family.

Read the full article here.

Last Thursday night, January 16, in front of a packed auditorium at Edison High School in northeast Minneapolis, 160 graduates walked across a stage to receive their GED. The GED, which stands for “General Educational Development” is a test that gives adults who never finished high school the opportunity to receive a high school equivalency credential.

During the ceremony, five graduates addressed the crowd and shared a little about their personal journeys, including Ibrahim Muzamil, who recently wrote about losing his eyesight as a child, moving from his native Ethiopia to the United States in 2007, and his dedication to learning English and pursuing his GED.

Read the full article here.