Red Deerians can gain insight into what it's like to be forced from home because of violence, only to learn to survive in a tent city.
Visitors to the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery for the free World Refugee Community Event on Monday, June 17, can make the rounds at a simulated refugee camp.
It will be held in the museum's reading room and consist of different tables, where refugee enactors will have to wait for food and clean water, shelter supplies and building instructions, and collect information on schooling, how the camp is run, etc.
Event organizer Jan Underwood, of Care for Newcomers, believes the re-enactment will be an eye-opening experience for many local residents.
A "human library" and poetry reading at the museum are among the other opportunities to glean knowledge about what thousands of refugees have been through. Underwood said people who have lived through the displaced persons experience will be on hand to answer questions and talk about their journeys to a new life far from home.
She believes refugees from the recent war in Ukraine will be at the event, as well as those who came to Canada because of past wars and violence.
It was the influx of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s that spurred the formation of the Care for Newcomers non-profit (formerly CARE), she added. "All of these people were coming from south-east Asia, and they had no English, and there was no one here to help them" — until a few local nurses and teachers banded together to start a support group.
More than four decades later, thousands of people are still coming to the Red Deer area because of global wars and Care from Newcomers is helping these refugees, as well as new immigrants, resettle.
During the World Refugee Day Community Event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the museum, several films will be shown, including the locally made Journey of Hope, with some of its creators in attendance.
And a talk by a human rights facilitator will be held from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m., former United Nations High Commission Refugee worker R.J. Riad will share his experiences in refugee camps.
The museum's public program manager Tymmarah Mackie said there will also be a "newcomer wall" in the Remarkable Red Deer exhibit, made up of artifacts related to newcomers and refugees that are in the museum's collection.