Stories

World Refugee Day 2026: Celebrating our shared humanity

Geography
Global
Date
June 18, 2026
In celebration of World Refugee Day, we want to honor the resilience, courage, and humanity of every person who has been forced to start over.
Global
Finding Others
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Around the world, over 120 million people havebeen forced from their homes. Behind that number are individual lives, individual stories, individual moments where someone showing up made all the difference. Refugees rarely arrive empty-handed. Their suitcases may be light, but they carry a wealth of skills, knowledge, and memory. What Alight does is help people rebuild their lives – creating the conditions where what was carried across borders becomes the foundation of something new. Celebrating World Refugee Day, we want to honor the resilience, courage, and humanity of every person who has been forced to start over. These are some of their stories.

Starting over, but not from scratch

There's a common assumption about refugees: that displacement strips everything away, and starting over means starting from nothing. The women rebuilding their lives in Somalia tell a different story.

Lul Mohamed Gure from Midnimo — a community for returning refugees in Kismayo, is a skilled artisan weaving, dying, and sewing traditional Somali fabrics. These skills allow Lul to earn a livelihood, while preserving her heritage, but she does even more: she shares the wealth of her knowledge and experience with other women. Lul runs Midnimo Women's Group, where young displaced women are trained in a craft that displacement had put at risk of disappearing.

Across Somalia, other women are doing the same – turning the skills they carried with them into something the next generation can carry forward. Fartun, displaced for decades, came back to her home country and opened a beauty salon using her talent as a henna artist. Sacdiyo built a training center around traditional incense-making. Roda, who made soap to survive displacement, now teaches others the craft. And Shukri, who lost her arm, leads a bakery run by people with disabilities – quietly redefining what inclusion looks like.

Different women. Different crafts. The same quiet refusal to let displacement be the end of their story.

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Grace is something to be shared

Displacement is not a single event – it stretches across years, often with no foreseeable end. Millions of Ukrainians were forced to leave their homes since 2022, and the grief, anxiety, and uncertainty that continues takes heavy toll. That is why Alight’s work in Europe puts mental healthcare at the center.

After Natalia Zakharchuk crossed into Poland, she was assisted with housing through Alight’s Airbnb program, and then found her way into Alight’s Stress Self-Help program. She started as a participant, but as she gained strength, she became a facilitator. Natalia shared: “It was important for me to realize that I was not simply hiding from the war and enemy bombs, but that I could support others who were going through similar experiences. In addition to facilitating psychological support sessions, I also led workshops on creating motanka dolls, a traditional Ukrainian folk doll. These workshops brought comfort not only to the women who attended but also to me. It is often said that when we help others, we help ourselves – and I truly believe that”. 

Yia Vang, chef and son of a Hmong refugee family, who supported Alight’s World Refugee Day campaign this year, knows what it means to be on the receiving end of that care: “Grace is like a warm blanket someone puts on you when you're really cold. And sometimes you get so warm and comfortable in that blanket, you forget it wasn't meant just for you. It's meant to be shared."

Life doesn't stop because of displacement

Displacement dominates the headlines. But behind it, life keeps moving. Children are born, families grow, and the ordinary moments that mark a human life happen regardless of whether there is a roof overhead or clean water nearby.

In Sudan, years of conflict have left millions of people with little or no access to healthcare. Alight has been on the ground throughout – and today is the largest humanitarian healthcare provider in the country. In Kassala, Faiza was living in an IDP camp when she discovered she was pregnant — one of life's most beautiful and most vulnerable moments, now carrying the extra weight of displacement. Through Alight, she received the support she needed. "Thanks to Alight for the incredible support and care I received during my pregnancy and delivery," she says. "I am truly grateful for the excellent service and compassion shown to me during such an important time."

Opening doors for the dreams of others

Dreams don’t disappear when you get displaced. But they become harder to hold.

In Pakistan, Muhammad Ibrahim Umerzai, an Afghan refugee, joined Alight’s Youth Skill Development Program when higher education seemed out of reach. He graduated top of his class, became a doctor, and now opens the same doors for others that were once opened for him. Another Afghan refugee, Abdul Malik Ahmadzai, who lost his father in ninth grade, taught himself tailoring to survive, and went on to graduate medical school with a 94% score. Both men received support and later supported others — that is what happens when you help someone reach what they were already reaching for.

Muna Abdulahi, a poet, performer, and Alight’s World Refugee Day campaign ambassador, expresses this idea beautifully: “It is my duty to be there for others, as others are there for me, and show up for each other — because I am just as much as you are."

What can you do with a motorcycle

Support for displaced people can sometimes take unexpected forms. In Uganda, Alight's Safe Ride initiative offers young refugees loans to purchase their own motorcycles.The vehicles are used as bodabodas – motorcycle taxis – generating income andturning a common mode of transport into a path to economic independence.

For Nzabonimpa Pascal,a Burundian refugee in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, it changed everything. “I now own my motorcycle, and no one can take it away from me,” he says. Thanks to Safe Ride, Nzabonimpa now earns enough to pay for his children's school fees, and was able to buy his wife a sewing machine. This is how owning a motorcycle quietly changed the course of a family.

Half a world away, David Chang – entrepreneur and motorcycle builder, engaged in Alight’s World Refugee Day 2026 campaign — builds custom motorcycles and auctions them off to fund clean water access in remote communities across Asia through his project Build for Good. “It feels good to help people,” David says. “And I think we just overlook that sometimes.”

It is not themotorcycle that matters – it is what a single asset, in the right hands, can set in motion. A livelihood. A child's education. A business. A future that looked, not long ago, entirely out of reach.

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