Sounds of Hope

For Yvonne Nsabimana Baraketse, the disruption began with two noises: a peppering spray of bullets followed by her own thin voice whispering the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Civil war had come to Rwanda. And Baraketse’s first response was one of faith.

From that time, many defining moments of Baraketse’s life came first as sounds. Less than four years after war broke out, a resonant crash shook her whole city as a twenty- thousand-pound airplane collided with the earth. Aboard the plane was her father, then the chief of staff of the Rwandan army, and the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. The shot that brought down the plane and assassinated Baraketse’s father led her family to flee Rwanda for Belgium and sparked the Rwandan genocide.

For a time, a spiritual silence filled Baraketse’s life. Nearly overcome by trauma, she ceased to pray, feeling that God had abandoned her and her family. But she found healing as she danced to traditional African music with Inyange, a local Rwandan nonprofit organization, and heard the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She joined the Church at age nineteen.

Hoping to improve their English-language skills, Baraketse and her husband, Jacques, moved to New Orleans with their family in 2004. But in 2005 they evacuated the city when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Baraketse remembers listening to a cacophony of wind and rain as, miles away, the tropical cyclone completely destroyed the family’s house.

“We were at the evacuation site for two weeks, and we had an almost-one-year-old baby,” she says. “We had a lot of organizations and churches helping us along the way, like the Red Cross. That’s one of the experiences that made me decide to join BYU Marriott’s MPA program. I saw that people can work together in communities like this, and that was impressive to me. When I was a refugee in Rwanda, we didn’t have as much support along the way.”

Baraketse enrolled at BYU Marriott in 2014, joining a strong community of individuals making a resounding impact on the global refugee crisis.

Equipped with outstanding skills in public and nonprofit service and a passion for improving the lives of those in need, BYU Marriott MPA alumni can be found across the country serving refugees in a wide variety of services. Though their job descriptions may differ, each alum helps fill critical needs for displaced people around the world.

Helping is a Calling

In 2019, more than seventy million people had been forcibly displaced across the globe; of those, at least five million were under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), according to the UN Refugee Agency website. As director of philanthropy of UNRWA USA in Washington, DC, 2007 BYU MPA graduate Hani Almadhoun helps link Palestinians in need with potential resources.

Coming from a Palestinian family with a refugee background, Almadhoun understands both the challenges of life as a refugee and various ways to solve those problems. “Growing up as a refugee, having to work for money was not just a nice skill to have—it was about survival,” he says. “At BYU, I learned a great deal about the importance of service to others. Making oneself available to help those in need is a calling and not just one of those nice things to do in life.”

Almadhoun says that perhaps his greatest responsibility is to inspire people. He describes himself as a storyteller, acknowledging donors as the true heroes in refugee relief. “What I have to do is help people overcome their cynicism and their sense of helplessness,” he explains. “That’s important because helpless people do not feel like changing the world. Each one of us can have an impact and make a difference if we care enough.”

He recalls helping one donor find and fill the needs of one community with a shortage of dialysis machines. The donor honored a relative who died due to kidney failure by setting aside funds to help those with the same condition. “Often charities make themselves the hero,” Almadhoun says. “But in reality, the donor is the real hero.”

A Holistic Approach

Aside from funds, another resource many refugees seek upon resettlement is education. This truth is what led Raymon Burton to join Salt Lake–based nonprofit One Refugee in 2017. Previously, he was working as a project coordinator for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he was asked to work alongside the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a global NGO, for six months. As he worked with the IRC, he had an experience that helped change the course of his career.

“I was assigned to take two Ethiopian men, Fenan and Feysel, to get their immunizations,” says Burton, who earned an MPA at BYU Marriott in 2010. “I can still see, ingrained in my head, the look on their faces when they realized they had to get five shots at once. We ended up bonding after that because we all laughed at how absolutely terrified they were to get these shots.”

As Burton dropped them off at their home, the two men invited him inside. Burton agreed and spent a transformative hour listening to his new friends talk about Ethiopia and their experiences in the United States so far. “As I left, Fenan thanked me for coming into their home and told me that when I visit them they feel seen,” Burton says. “That was a defining moment for me.”

Now executive director of One Refugee, Burton organizes personalized support for college students from refugee backgrounds. “Our students’ lives are strung so tight that any small change in their lives can cause everything to crash,” Burton explains. “We try to apply a holistic approach to assisting the students in finding success.”

One Refugee takes a holistic approach partly through providing one-on-one career counseling, organized by career manager Kirsi Jarvis. “I help students from an early stage start building networking skills,” says Jarvis, who earned an MPA with an emphasis in nonprofit management from BYU Marriott in 2019. It can be difficult for students with refugee backgrounds to find postgraduation work, Jarvis notes, but she works diligently to close that gap. “Our ultimate hope is that through career and professional development, students will become self-reliant professionally,” she says. “For years to come, they’ll be able to continue to use skills they developed and be rock stars in networking, engaging in professional careers, and helping others do the same.”

Since its inception, One Refugee has aided more than 570 students with refugee backgrounds from nearly every continent. Both Burton and Jarvis greatly enjoy working closely with these students. “A lot of services are available for newly resettled refugees,” Burton says. “But there’s not a lot for the highly motivated young-adult population that is now transitioning into college and is ready to take the next steps in terms of integration and education.”

Jarvis remembers one particularly motivated student who, as a freshman at Salt Lake Community College, sought out a summer internship in engineering despite being told he should wait to look for jobs in his field. The student worked with Jarvis on networking, résumé prep, and interview practice, and was soon offered an internship with a resort in Park City, Utah. “He worked there through the summer, and he loved it,” says Jarvis. “He was totally independent and responsible for his own tasks, and the whole team loved him.”

Sharing the Feeling of Home

Another member of the One Refugee team, 2019 BYU MPA graduate Elisabeth Zenger credits her entry into a career aiding refugees to her time at BYU Marriott. “I’m grateful for the MPA education that I received. It opened the world to me,” she says. “I feel so grateful every day that I just get to help people.”

Zenger meets one-on-one with more than one hundred students as part of her responsibilities as an education case manager, providing personalized guidance on everything from study skills to budget creation. She recalls being inspired to help migrating peoples when her family hosted foreign-exchange students when she was younger.

“I love sharing the feeling of home with other people,” she says. “When I found the MPA program, I realized that I could actually do that as a career. But I would say the turning point of my career was a study abroad that I did with the MPA program.”

In 2019, Zenger traveled around the globe on a refugee-themed study abroad program. Visiting countries such as Greece, the Czech Republic, and Sweden, students met with refugees and NGOs working on refugee issues. “The experience was amazing,” says associate professor David Hart, one of the study abroad program directors. “Our students got on-theground, face-to-face experience working in refugee camps, which is difficult to access. That was life changing for a lot of people.”

A Global Perspective

In addition to studying abroad, MPA students enjoy myriad resources that provide the necessary experience to hit the ground running in various refugee- related careers. Associate professor and study abroad program codirector Chris Silvia says these skills are “learned in the classroom or while working with community partners or through involvement in unique experiential learning opportunities, such as Grantwell and Good Measures, or by participating in programs offered through the Ballard Center for Social Impact.”

A donor liaison for the Philanthropies Department of the Church, Emily Martin discovered an opportunity to learn about refugee-related issues in 2019 when she completed her capstone project with the Londonbased AMAR Foundation, which helps vulnerable communities in the Middle East. While creating a grant-writing template for the organization, the 2019 EMPA graduate learned not only about the Middle Eastern refugees the grant would impact but, to her surprise, about another group as well.

“I made friends with some Israeli-Jewish gentlemen whom I met on the street,” Martin says. “Through them, I began to understand from a global perspective how Israelis were displaced after WWII and the impact that has. The Israelis walked around with an open, gaping wound emotionally—you could feel it.”

These MPA alumni are only the tip of the iceberg. The list of inspiring MPA graduates is expansive and includes individuals such as 2012 graduate Rachel Bennion, who assists with legal services for Catholic Charities in Washington, DC; 2015 graduate Todd Tapp, who joined US Citizenship and Immigration Services as an asylum officer; and current emPA student Suzanne Whitehead, who serves as executive director of volunteer-placement program HELP International.

As surely as BYU Marriott MPA alumni are positively impacting the lives of refugees around the world, they are also becoming increasingly recognized in the field for their strong skills and solid character. “I almost never turn down interns or job applicants from BYU,” says Almadhoun. “BYU students are humble, but they are also quietly brilliant.”

The Drumbeat of Joy

Twice a refugee, Baraketse has built a life centered on service. The sounds she hears most often now are ones of hope and home, including the beating of drums.

“I love the sound of drums—it reminds me, of course, of back home in Rwanda,” Baraketse says. “In all the places I’ve called home, from Rwanda all the way here to Utah, drums have reminded me of moments growing up and of joy.”

Shortly before graduating with an MPA in 2016, Baraketse used her newly acquired skills to found the nonprofit Ngoma y’Africa Cultural Center, a musicand-dance group composed of former refugees and friends in the Utah Valley area. The group promotes African culture and helps members connect with their heritage. Baraketse was also a refugee response intern with the Church’s Humanitarian Services Department and now teaches French-immersion classes at a local elementary school.

Baraketse knows that the joyful sounds of African music and community that once saved her from grief can also heal other former refugees and even societies through education. Everywhere she has lived, she has encountered misunderstandings about her history and culture. “There’s no progress of communities when people have stereotypes about each other,” she says, pointing to the tensions that led to the Rwandan Civil War. “When no intercultural exchange is going on, that’s when biases increase, and that’s when racism increases.”

Ultimately, the message Baraketse shares with refugees and nonrefugees alike is one of hope. “When you’ve been in those dark moments, you can choose to let those trials kill you,” she says, “or you can hang on to the positive. You decide to be stronger through it.”

Photos courtesy of Yvonne Baraketse, Raymon Burton, and Elisabeth Zenger

This article was originally published in the MPA 2019–20 annual report, pages 4–9.