Refugees come from many different backgrounds and live in many different circumstances, so I wouldn't like to generalise. But I think refugees from the U.K. would probably be healthier and better fed than those from many other countries.
I was the child of refugees.
We've had a humble upbringing. You know, my father came through as a political refugee; my mother comes from a hard-working-farmers family. We've had humble upbringing.
I don't really remember much about Kosovo. I only remember growing up in London, where my parents had to basically start from scratch.
As a former refugee myself, I am very grateful for the help my family received and the opportunities this opened up for me and where it has brought me.
My mother was born in a refugee camp in Germany before the family immigrated to western Canada. They were able to get visas thanks to my grandfather's older sister, who had immigrated between the wars.
My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea.
My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.
I grew up around Vietnamese refugees, around people who don't speak English as a first language.
My experiences there truly defined who I am to this day as far as my humanitarian work because I was a refugee in Albania.
