Tori Hogan (Trinity '04): The Refugee Experience
When Tori Hogan arrived at Duke, she intended to become a geneticist. The FOCUS cluster “Humanitarian Challenges” altered her path. Hogan turned her attention towards refugee children and crafted a Program II major in Global Health and Human Development. She combined her interest in travel with pursuing this issue, spending time with refugee children in Kenya and Lebanon, and participated in a Study Abroad program in Uganda.
Her world travels, though, brought Hogan back to the issues facing refugees and immigrants in the local community. Following a sequence of Research Service Learning courses, Hogan’s capstone project, “Coping in the Aftermath: Addressing the Psychosocial Needs of Refugee Children,” partnered with Lutheran Family Services. She also established a refugee outreach World Club program at Jordan High School in Durham, worked closely with a Burmese family in Durham, and taught a Duke House Course called “The Refugee Experience.”
“My experience with Wine and Cha-Cha [two Burmese girls she
mentors in Durham] has shown me that saving the world comes down to
the personal relationships with the people around me. I now believe
that you can change the world one person at a time,” she says. “I
realized that to be effective, you have to work within your own
community.”
A Fulbright Scholarship winner, Tori attended the American
University in Cairo in 2004-2005, continuing her refugee studies.
“I’ll always have connections to the developing world,” Hogan says,
“but the biggest difference I can make is here, through advocacy
and education.”
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