After @Kinglimaa spoke out this week about the exploitation she experienced first hand as a refugee in Kakuma @Refugees camp, we were contacted by a friend of hers, Hamdia Ahmed, who is also a Somali-American model & activist. She shared some of her story, please read and share:

“My name is Hamdia Ahmed. I am a former refugee, activist, and model. I was born while my mother was escaping from the Somali war. I grew up in a refugee camp for the first seven years of my life. Growing up in a refugee camp was very challenging...

My parents worked hard to take care of their children. I currently live in the United States. When I lived in the refugee camp, I never saw someone that looked like me visiting the refugee camp with an organization. I could not fully understand why this happened, but I do now...

My dream has always been to advocate for refugees. I have spoken at places like the United Nations to advocate for refugee children. My hope is to make sure refugee children are not forgotten. My first bad experience with an organization was a few years ago...

I learned a lot about how problematic many organizations are. I once asked an organization if I could travel with them to the same refugee camp I grew up in as a child. Instead of taking me, they declined. A few months later, they took a celebrity to a different refugee camp...

They did not acknowledge that I could have had a more positive impact on those children more than a celebrity would. Because I did not have a large social media following, they could not use me for marketing. They needed someone who would help the organization make money.

Having a positive impact on refugee children was more important to me than marketing or money. This organization failed to realize that I was a real expert because I grew up in a refugee camp. I know what is beneficial and how things work. There are so many organizations that...

...have celebrities as their ambassadors. Many of these celebrities and influencers go on mission trips for a few weeks to take images with children for marketing without parental consent. There is no justification for uploading images of children to promote an organization...

There are ways that you can help without showing children's photos on social media platforms for those who genuinely want to help children. It is problematic when celebrities/ influencers travel to places like refugee camps to pretend to give those children hope...

Most of the time, they leave them behind without offering any long-lasting impacts. They make promises that they won’t follow up with. Poverty is more complicated than just a lack of materials. The poor are not helpless. Every poor person has something to give, wisdom....

...resilience, and creativity. These are all critical assets. We need organizations to understand how problematic it is to use celebrities/ influencers as ambassadors while leaving behind those like myself who can create lasting impacts on the lives of refugees and others...

...who are struggling. We need organizations to understand that the poor are not hopeless; they have so much to offer to the world. We need organizations, celebrities, and influencers to stop taking pictures of kids especially without parental consent for marketing. /
END THREAD