Contact: Sarah Ray



802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: April 3, 2003

MIDDLEBURY,

VT
- Students at Middlebury College will

hold a refugee camp simulation from Saturday, April 12-Sunday, April 13.

According to organizers, participants will adopt the roles of refugees

to gain some idea of life in a refugee camp and increase awareness of

refugee issues. The simulation, which is open to the public, will begin

at 3 p.m. as participants register according to the procedures of the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Following assignments to

specified plots and grouping into family units, participants will receive

food rations and visit a mock medical clinic. Participants may remain

at the simulation until 8 p.m. and listen to talks by refugee experts,

or spend the night and stay until the simulation ends at 8 a.m. Sunday,

April 13. The event will take place in the College’s Kenyon Arena

on South Main Street (Route 30). Admission is free but registration is

required.

Throughout

the event, information on refugees around the world will be available

at information tables, and participants will have opportunities for informal

discussions among themselves. The evening activities will culminate with

several guest speakers. At 6:30 p.m., Allison Anderson Pillsbury of the

Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a nongovernmental

organization in New York City, will give a talk. Her biography is available

on the simulation’s Web site at http://community.middlebury.edu/~umoja/mrcs/pillsbury.htm.

Immediately after Pillsbury’s remarks, at approximately 7:15 p.m.,

Hiram A. Ruiz of the Washington D.C.-based United States Committee for

Refugees and Immigration and Refugee Services of America will give the

keynote lecture. His biography is also available at the simulation’s

Web site at http://community.middlebury.edu/~umoja/mrcs/hiram.htm.

Both speakers will show slides during their presentations.

Brian

Hoyer, a Middlebury College senior and the event’s director, conceived

of the idea when he was working in the Palorinya Refugee Settlement, a

refugee camp in northern Uganda. He spent five weeks there as part of

a semester of study abroad in Uganda during the spring of his

junior year in 2002. During Middlebury College’s January semester

this year, Hoyer offered a workshop on refugee camp simulation that laid

the groundwork for this event and drew the interest of students who are

now working with him as organizers.

Hoyer

said the event organizers share a primary goal. “We hope that participants

will gain a greater understanding of refugee issues and inspire action

on our campus and beyond. Students, individuals and families are all welcome,”

he said.

The

event is sponsored and co-sponsored by a number of Middlebury College

organizations. The sponsors are Umoja and the Model United Nations, and

the co-sponsors are the Parton Health Center, The New Left, and the Center

for Campus Activities and Leadership.

For

more information and to register to attend, visit the Middlebury College

Refugee Camp Simulation Web site at http://community.middlebury.edu/~umoja/mrcs/,

or contact Brian Hoyer, director of the Middlebury College Refugee Camp

Simulation, at bhoyer@middlebury.edu

or 802-443-3951.