A Missed Connection

“We rented President Trump’s childhood home to welcome refugees. Here’s what happened.”

That’s a pretty interesting headline, and one I definitely clicked. When I did, I found a video, which I immediately watched, and was immediately disappointed. The video was made by Oxfam, with the aim of spreading awareness of what refugees face, and encouraging people to sign a petition, asking our administration to welcome more of them. It’s an excellent idea, but it fell a bit flat.

The most interesting thing about this concept are the refugees themselves. I was truly curious to hear their stories, told within the confines of Trump’s childhood home. Oxfam teases this within the first minute of the video, saying they wanted to “Give these refugees a unique way to tell their story to the world.” But no stories came. Instead, we get a couple of seconds of each refugee explaining what America means to them, some general facts about refugees…and then it’s over.

This really seems like a shame. A lot of work went into renting the home, finding refugees willing to share, getting the film crew together etc., and to not allow us to hear the stories is odd. I did some Googling, and found some news articles, and further information about the refugees on Oxfam’s website, but I shouldn’t have had to dig that hard. It seems like Oxfam was going for a ‘Human connection’ piece, and went off track somewhere in the editing booth.