“What is the official definition of a refugee? What challenges do they face?” Those questions kept popping up as college students brainstormed problems and solutions for the prompt “refugee health” at UConn’s GloHHacks hackathon.
The prompt felt distant and vague to us; it was something we would occasionally read about in the headlines, but news articles tend to all sound the same.
“X number of people seeking asylum, X number of people displaced from homes in natural disasters.” Most of us have never really taken the time to understand the issue beyond stories of families facing financial realities in a foreign nation, children struggling to adjust to a new language and society, and the mental health burdens that they often carry with them. These stories have sadly become generic; they present disjointed narratives that fail to give us a holistic picture of what refugees experience.
This disconnect in understanding naturally results in a society with fewer community initiatives and resources for refugees.
Nicky Case’s simulation “Evolution of Trust” has communicated Economic Theory effectively to people of all ages, inspiring many to learn about Game Theory and intuitively understand the economics of decision-making. It skillfully combines storytelling with logic, allowing people to own for themselves the takeaways from the experience. Our simulation was inspired by Case’s model of message delivery; our simulation offers a human glimpse into refugee experiences, aiming for holistic understanding instead of merely evoking an emotional response through a provocative story.
