Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 123

“When you’re six you have like twenty-eight responsibilities. ...

“When you’re six you have like twenty-eight responsibilities. You have to help your mom. You have to help your dad. And you have to keep your room clean so your parents don’t come in and see your secrets. I have over one hundred secrets and only five have been discovered because they’re protected by lasers. I’ll tell you one but then I’ll have to throw it away. I’m a real ninja master because I got powers from glowing red rocks I found in the caverns of lost treasure. Someone hid them there in the 1980’s during World War 7. That’s all I can tell you now because I don’t want everybody to know how special I am.”

(Manila, Philippines)

“My young son is very curious. Every time I come home, he asks...

“My young son is very curious. Every time I come home, he asks me so many questions. He wants to know all about my day. It’s motivating for me because I always want to have something exciting to tell him. But recently I’ve been out of work so there isn’t much to say. I’ve been going on so many interviews without any luck. I don’t try to hide anything from him because he sees that I’m striving. I just tell him: ‘I’m looking for a job that suits me, and I still haven’t found the right one yet.’ But today I finally found a new job selling security equipment. I’m starting tomorrow. So I’m very excited to go home and report the good news.”

(Manila, Philippines)

“I’m starting an advocacy group at my university to break the...

“I’m starting an advocacy group at my university to break the stigma around domestic violence. We have about seventy members so far. I want to give women the confidence to speak about things that they only whisper about. I know what it’s like. I lived under the reign of my father for most of my life. He’d throw things. He’d punch us. I had to do so many little things to help us survive. I told the nuns at my school. I told our neighbors to call the police if they heard screaming. I made a duplicate key so we could go back for food whenever we escaped the house. During one argument I tried to put myself between him and my mother. He grabbed a knife and held it to my throat for three minutes. I remember him saying: ‘You’re a disgrace to me,’ and ‘I never wanted you,’ and ‘You make life harder.’ I was terrified, but I’d been terrified for most of my life, so I knew exactly what to do. I removed my mind from the situation. I prayed for my mother. I tried to reflect on my life. I remember feeling happy because I’d been alive for fourteen years, and I’d protected my mother for all that time.”

(Manila, Philippines)

“Now I have someone to play with!”(Manila, Philippines)

“Now I have someone to play with!”

(Manila, Philippines)

“I had to break up with my girlfriend last week. We’d been...

“I had to break up with my girlfriend last week. We’d been trying to hide our relationship because our parents think we’re too young to date. I’d been telling my mom we were just friends. And we told her dad I was gay. But last week a neighbor took a picture of us kissing in the park, and my mom surprised me with the pictures when I got home. I had to promise that I’d end the relationship and focus on my studies. I’m actually on my way to her house right now. But it’s only because I need help with a school project.”

(Manila, Philippines)

Thanks to everyone who donated to the fundraiser this week! As...

Thanks to everyone who donated to the fundraiser this week! As of this moment, $1,836,000 has been raised from over 35,000 donors. That will be enough to build 3,000 sturdy bamboo houses for Rohingya refugees that are currently living in make-shift plastic shelters. A family of five can live in each house, so with monsoon season approaching, these houses will significantly improve the living conditions of **nearly 15,000 people.** Thank you so much to everyone who donated. I’ll be leaving the fundraiser up for the rest of the day for anyone who’d still like to make a donation: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

Before moving on, I want to give a special thanks to Jerome Jarre, who was largely the inspiration for this fundraiser. (Pictured here with Sai’d, who’s story we shared yesterday.) Last year, Jerome teamed up with a group of You Tubers and social media influencers to form Love Army—which has raised nearly $5,000,000 to help displaced people in Somalia as well as Rohingya refugees. I was most impressed by the fact that Jerome then moved to both Somalia and Bangladesh for several months to ensure the money was being used effectively with zero overhead costs. Jerome and Sa’id will be working with hundreds of paid Rohingya volunteers to construct the houses we’re funding, and will ensure all $1,800,000 goes directly to refugees. So thank you, Jerome and Sa’id, for your work and inspiration.

“There were no jobs during the civil war, so my dad went from...

“There were no jobs during the civil war, so my dad went from being an engineer to selling food. We had a shop in the main market of Mogadishu and during the day I helped him run the business. One morning I stepped outside to take a phone call, and a mortar hit our building. Twelve people were killed on the spot. I fell down in the middle of the road. My right thigh was broken. For ten minutes I lay in the street because everyone was too scared to get me. When I finally got to the hospital, it was chaos. There was no electricity. There were people in the hallways with their stomachs open. Doctors and nurses were making quick decisions without a second thought. I heard someone say to just cut off my leg. But there was an American surgeon from Los Angeles in that hospital. His name was Oscar. He had come to Somalia just to save lives. And under the most difficult circumstances he operated on my leg. He was like a miracle. I knew that God had saved me for a reason. I too was going to be a humanitarian.” (2/2)

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I’m ending the Rohingya series by sharing the story of Sa'id, who is helping oversee the construction project we are helping to fund. (We’ve raised over $1.5 million so far, which is enough to build over 2,500 houses.) Sai’d works with the American Refugee Committee, who is partnering with Love Army to provide logistical and organizational support. As is evident from his story, this work is very personal to Sa’id because he is a refugee himself. Today is the final day of our fundraiser. We’re almost up to 30,000 donors. If we reach $1.8 million, that will be 3000 houses. *Those houses can hold 15,000 people.” Every little bit matters, so please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“I was twenty when the civil war came to Somalia. It started as...

“I was twenty when the civil war came to Somalia. It started as a normal day for me. I woke up that morning thinking about applying to university. Suddenly I heard big sounds like cannon in the distance. Then came the sounds of gunfire. The fighting spread so fast. By that afternoon I saw two dead bodies in the street. I had never seen a dead person in my life. My neighborhood became a battleground, but we couldn’t leave because there was no transportation. There was no water or electricity. The ATM’s wouldn’t work. Mortars began to fall near our house so we took shelter in a nearby school. I remember that first night, sleeping on the floor of the school, listening to the BBC Somali service on a handheld radio. I had no idea what was happening. In just a few hours my life had gone from thinking about college to only thinking about surviving.” (½)

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I’m ending the Rohingya series by sharing the story of Sa'id, who is helping oversee the construction project we are helping to fund. (We’ve raised over $1.5 million so far, which is enough to build over 2,500 houses.) Sai’d works with the American Refugee Commitee, who is partnering with Love Army to provide logistical and organizational support. As is evident from his story, this work is very personal to Sa’id because he is a refugee himself. Today is the final day of our fundraiser. We’re almost up to 30,000 donors. If we reach $1.8 million, that will be 3000 houses. *Those houses can hold 15,000 people.* Every little bit matters, so please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“My parents fled Myanmar twenty-five years ago, so I was born in...

“My parents fled Myanmar twenty-five years ago, so I was born in these camps. I feel like a prisoner here. I don’t have any rights. The only thing that refugees are allowed to do is exist. It’s not legal for us to study. It’s not legal for us to work. Even if I earned a PhD, I wouldn’t be able to get a job in Bangladesh. But we can’t go home. The only thing worse than being here is going back to Myanmar. Some of my family decided to stay in Myanmar. A few months ago I got a call from my cousin in the middle of the night. He told me: ‘Pray for us. We are going to die. I am watching everyone die and there’s nothing I can do.’ I told him that we’d pray for him. I could hear gunshots in the background. And then he hung up. A few weeks later he arrived alone in the camp. He told us that fifty of our relatives were killed that night. He was the only one who escaped.”

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**One day left for our fundraiser.** This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by the military and Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for nearly 2000 houses so far, but the need is much more. There’s only one day left in our campaign, so please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“The military arrested a leader of our village and took him out...

“The military arrested a leader of our village and took him out into the forest. The next morning, we broke into small groups and everyone went searching for him. I went with two of my friends. We were searching in the forest when I heard one of them scream. I ran over to see what he found. It was the man we were looking for, but his neck had been cut.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by the military and Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for nearly 2000 houses so far, but the need is much more. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm