United Nations Development Programme
Social Good Summit 2016 #2030now
Yusra Mardini, an 18-year-old Olympian swimmer and Yiech Pur Biel is a 21-year-old track and field Olympian who competed in the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics with Team Refugees, pictured with
Carolyn Miles, President and Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and members at UN Foundation’s Facebook Live room at the 2016 Social Good Summit.
Olympian Yusra and her sister swam three-hours when the rubber dinghy they were in with fellow Syrian refugees began to sink in the middle of the Aegean Sea as the group was fleeing from Syria to Lesbos for Greece. They saved 20 lives that day.
Yiech Pur Biel was only 10-years-old when his mom left him and four siblings at an orphanage in South Sudan, not knowing if her kids could survive the perilous trek to Ethiopia. At 11, Yusra became a refugee in Kenya, and lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp for the next 10 years of his life. From morning to nightfall, he ran, without shoes, without adequate access to water or sanitation, he ran all the way to the Olympics team.
Credit: Lei Phyu/ UNDP
Social Good Summit 2016 #2030now
Yusra Mardini, an 18-year-old Olympian swimmer and Yiech Pur Biel is a 21-year-old track and field Olympian who competed in the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics with Team Refugees, pictured with
Carolyn Miles, President and Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and members at UN Foundation’s Facebook Live room at the 2016 Social Good Summit.
Olympian Yusra and her sister swam three-hours when the rubber dinghy they were in with fellow Syrian refugees began to sink in the middle of the Aegean Sea as the group was fleeing from Syria to Lesbos for Greece. They saved 20 lives that day.
Yiech Pur Biel was only 10-years-old when his mom left him and four siblings at an orphanage in South Sudan, not knowing if her kids could survive the perilous trek to Ethiopia. At 11, Yusra became a refugee in Kenya, and lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp for the next 10 years of his life. From morning to nightfall, he ran, without shoes, without adequate access to water or sanitation, he ran all the way to the Olympics team.
Credit: Lei Phyu/ UNDP