It was my 13th birthday.
My mother made my favorite dish of rice and beans.
In the afternoon,
some neighbors celebrated in front of our house,
dancing, laughing, eating.
With music, filling the air in our usually quiet small village
in the Congo.
Several hours later,
the peaceful evening was torn apart.
Torn apart by gunfire.
Terrified screams filled the air.
My mother and father wanted us children to seek shelter from this danger.
I remember my mother shouting to us all,
"Go to the tree, go to the tree," she said.
There was no time to say goodbye.
Nine of us children ran to the forest
and huddled together through the night
under that tree.
It was our place of sanctuary,
our place of safety.
After hours of terror, the guns went quiet.
The Sun appeared in the morning.
But not our parents.
They still had not returned.
The long, stretching branches of our tree
could not protect us from our growing worry.
As we returned to our village, our fear turned to despair.
My mother and father had been killed,
along with dozens [of] innocent men,
women and children.
The violence of that night ripped out our precious roots
and set as adrift into the world.
We were now orphans, outsiders, refugees
without a place to call home,
without a place of safety.
We were forced to leave our village and everything we knew.
We traveled miles, crossed borders
and joined tens of thousands of other refugees
in the refugee settlement in Uganda.
There, our family shared the many challenges
faced by displaced people around the world.
We learned to live in a constant state of struggle.
We ate, kept clean, protected each other,
all to maintain some level of dignity and hope.
I tell my story not because it is unique.
Just the opposite.
I am one of many displaced people around the world.
The number of forcibly displaced people has more than doubled since 2013.
It has surpassed 108 million, and it’s continuing to rise.
Just over half of the displaced people are women and girls,
and 43.3 million are children.
There is such a fragile border between the basic comfort most of us enjoy
and the misery that is the daily existence for millions of refugees.
My experience has taught me anyone can become a refugee.
To lose that place of safety they once had.
But my experience has also taught me something else.
That it is possible to break through.
To break through those barriers of distrust and discrimination
and uncertainty.
To find a place of community, friendship
and to even find hope.
Those changes can happen in small and large ways
and in ways that are sometimes difficult to imagine.
Let me explain.
When I was born,
my maternal grandmother wanted my mother to kill me.
Why?
Because she and many others held the common belief
that my albinism was a curse.
My mother refused, believing I was not a curse
but a gift from God.
So you see, my mother had saved my life twice.
Once when I was born.
And on the last day I saw her alive.
People can change.
When I was 12,
there was a girl in school who always avoided me
until one day,
the teacher assigned her to be a partner on a school project.
The girl asked me,
"If you touch me,
will my children also look like you?"
I explained to her, I'm not a curse.
I'm not contagious.
This is just how I was born.
That exchange allowed us to break through
and spike both a deeper understanding
and a good friendship.
Breaking through the barriers of fear and ignorance
are critical to building bridges of understanding
between the refugee population and the community they join.
Just as I learned as a young girl,
this type of change requires the openness to share one's story
and a willingness to grow.
Years later,
my albinism worked in my favor.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees
began to work on plans for my resettlement.
Albinos were being prioritized
because of the danger they face in their home countries.
Violence, discrimination, that some nations, including mine,
were unable to protect us from.
So in 2018,
five years after I lost both my mother and my motherland,
I left Africa to come to the United States.
My initial reaction when I arrived in Worcester, Massachusetts was,
"It's so cold here."
(Laughter)
As I saw my foster family holding up signs
that said “Welcome to America, Chantale,”
I felt that I had finally found a home.
The cold was just the beginning of [a] series of adjustments
to a very unfamiliar place and an entirely different culture.
Mastering English was a challenge,
but it was far surpassed by the great joy of being able to attend school again.
Well, I graduated high school in three years and ...
(Applause)
And I'm now a junior at Wellesley College.
(Cheers and applause)
Majoring in political science.
(Applause)
After reflecting on my own journey and my own experiences,
I began to dream of creating similar learning [opportunities]
for young girls still living in the same refugee settlements
I lived in as a child.
That dream has taken shape
in the creation of “Refugee Can Be,”
a non-profit organization I founded
with the help of dedicated partners and supporters.
Our core mission is to be that tree,
that place of sanctuary,
that place of safety,
to provide a secondary education
along with livelihood and leadership training
for the girls in the camp.
To show them that they, too, can break through.
I have learned that a refugee can be anything
she dreams she can be.
But she can't do it on her own.
The course of my life, once dictated by tragedy and loss
is now in my power.
(Applause)
There are hundreds of people
who reached out to help me, to teach me,
to give me access to incredible opportunities.
Now it is my turn to reach out, to use the platform I have
to secure for other refugees the chance
to realize their own power to break through.
Beyond the essential roles that governments, NGOs,
businesses can and must play to eliminate causes of displacement,
each of us are called to take action.
To help provide that place of safety,
by welcoming those who once lost everything,
but have a world of creativity and talent
to bring into the work of rebuilding their lives
and enhancing the communities we share with them.
Meet each refugee with both curiosity and compassion,
understanding their specific needs, learning their specific stories
and calling them by name.
You are hearing one voice today.
It is a voice of a refugee girl
who was rescued through the love and generosity of many.
But I feel the voices of millions of refugees speaking through me,
here, as I do.
The urgency of those voices
calling on each one of us
to help refugees break through,
to find a place of sanctuary,
find a place of safety.
Find a way home.
Thank you.
(Cheers and applause)