Clarkston nonprofit Fugees Family is a finalist in Reader's Digest's 2019 Nicest Places in America contest honoring 50 communities around the nation—one from each state—committed to kindness, trust and health. The winner will grace the cover of the magazine.
The tuition-free private school was founded by Luma Mufleh, who, in 2004, took a wrong turn home and came across barefoot refugee children kicking around a worn out soccer ball in an apartment complex. It reminded her of her time playing soccer back in her hometown Amman, Jordan.
"Luma soon learned the boys — from Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia — were among several thousand war refugees who had been placed in Clarkston, a small city east of Atlanta, a major hub of refugee resettlement," AJC reporter Helena Oliviero wrote in a 2012 feature on Mufleh. "She returned a few days later with a new soccer ball and asked them if she could play. If they said yes, they could keep the ball."
Mufleh became their coach, and named the team the “Fugees,” short for refugees.
» RELATED: World Refugee Day 2019: Scenes from Clarkston's colorful celebration
Today, Mufleh’s nonprofit The Fugees Family hosts year-round soccer programs for all refugee children, plus tutoring and schooling at the Fugees Academy, the nation’s only free school dedicated to refugee education.
“In 2019, 100 percent of the graduating class of the Fugees Academy in Clarkston, Georgia, was accepted into college, and every single one of them was the first in their family to make it past middle school,” Annie Dwyer, who nominated Fugees for the Reader’s Digest award, said. “It’s a point of pride for the few schools that manage it. For Fugees, it’s extra impressive given the struggles faced by some of its students.”
But there’s more to the Fugees Family than its academic track record.
Mufleh, who has previously received the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award, helps parents pay rent through the Fugees Supper Club, for which moms prepare meals from their native countries to sell for $10 a plate. She hosts cookouts and celebrates the students’ birthdays, all part of her mission to help the community adapt to their new home.
» RELATED: Fugees soccer founder expands her school for refugee children to Ohio
“For Luma, there is this moral imperative that we can’t stand by and watch these kids fall through the cracks,” Claire Thurman, who runs the Fugees after-school mentoring program, told Reader’s Digest. “This being Luma’s adopted country, she sees all of the hope it has to offer, and she also sees the system can let down the most vulnerable people.”
The Reader’s Digest page for The Fugees Family also features first-person narratives from Fugees students themselves.
You can read their stories and vote for The Fugees Family at rd.com.
About refugees in America, Georgia
According to the UNHCR, one person is forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict, persecution or natural disaster every two seconds.
"We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record," the agency's official website states.
While the United States has historically led the way with global refugee resettlement, in January 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning entry to individuals from countries deemed high-risk, including some of the world’s largest sources of refugees, from entering the U.S. Since then, the numbers of new arrivals all over the country, including in Georgia, have dramatically declined.
The administration's refugee admissions goal for 2019 is 30,000, the lowest number in 40 years. According to the Georgia Coalition of Refugee Service Agencies, the country is not even on track to meet the reduced goal.
“Without the refugee resettlement program, these individuals we are lucky to have as neighbors—who enrich our communities and contribute to our state—would not be here. While we celebrate those who have been able to rebuild their lives here in Georgia, we must not forget the families who have been turned away from America’s door in their time of need,” CRSA officials wrote on Facebook ahead of Clarkston’s World Refugee Day event last month.
» RELATED: A place to call home: Once a victim, Bhutanese refugee Ryan Koirala is now a protector
Georgia, which has traditionally welcomed refugees and is among the top 10 states for new refugee arrivals, welcomed 2,000 to 3,000 individuals each year up until 2017. Data from the federal Refugee Processing Center, which is part of the State Department, found only 755 refugees arrived in the state as of May 2019. Compare that to the nearly 1,000 in the last three months of 2016.
Georgia’s refugees represent a multitude of faiths and hail from all over the world, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bhutan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Myanmar, Liberia, Sudan, Vietnam and more.
Want to get involved with refugee resettlement? Learn more here.
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