Date: November 28, 2017, 5-8pm
Location: NAC Ballroom, CCNY
The United Nations Association of City College, in collaboration with Tau Kappa Epsilon, presents the Night of a Thousand Dinners, a benefit dinner for the Adopt-A-Future campaign. The United Nations Association of the United States (UNA-USA) is one of the only organizations in the United States authorized by UNHCR to raise awareness and funds for the United Nations. This year the program will focus on supporting schools in two UNHCR camps in Kenya, Dadaab and Kakuma. All funds raised will be matched through the Educate a Child Fund of Her Highness Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser of Qatar and other philanthropic partners, doubling the impact of the initiative. Our chapter, UNA-CCNY, is passionate about doing our part for the campaign, setting a goal to raise $1,000 this year.
Night of a Thousand Dinners is a ticketed dinner ($8) open to the public, with a variety of home cooked dishes from many cultures. The event will focus on refugee experiences from our own CCNY community members. The speakers include: Gresa Murati, a Kosovar refugee and CCNY student, Martine Edjuku, a Congolese refugee and CCNY alumni, and Nyamuoch Girwath, a Sudanese refugee and CCNY student.
The goal of this event is to raise awareness of the ongoing refugee crisis - the worst since World War II - and remind the CCNY community that this crisis not just a far away tragedy on the news, but that the crisis effects our own community. We will also have a speaker from the UN and potentially some of own own faculty.
We hope you are able to join us for this delicious dinner and fundraiser for a great cause.
*If you would like to volunteer to help with the event, have refugee experiences you wish to share at the event, or have any other questions/concerns, please contact us at [email protected]
Student Speakers:
Gresa Murati was born and brought up in Gjilan, Kosovo. She became a refugee at the age of 4 when her family, targets of the ethnic cleansing, fled to escape the genocide. They lived in a UNHCR refugee camp before relocating to Canada, and eventually returned to Kosovo after the war ended. In high school, she was an exchange student in Arizona where she spent a year with a host family. Currently, she is involved in activism about the refugee crisis. She is majoring in political science and minoring in public policy at City College. In the future, Gresa hopes to go to law school and work in international and immigration law.
Martine Matekiya Edjuku was born and raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She came to the United States in April 2005 for a meeting regarding the Commission on Sustainable Development at the United Nations. She could not return to the DRC due to political conflicts, and has remained in the U.S. since. Martine is a single mother of one. She currently works with Famille Debout, an NGO member of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. Famille Debout supports an elementary school of about 125 children in Lusanga, DRC. She received her Bachelor's in French linguistics from the School of Teaching ISP/Gombe in Kinshasa, and a second Bachelor’s in international studies and development, and romance languages: Spanish and French at City College in 2016. She hopes to pursue a Master’s degree in Liberal Studies, focusing on Social and Environmental Justice Studies.