*Supermodel and activist Iman is opening up about her family’s escape from Somalia in 1972.
“My family left in the middle of the night, with just the clothes on our backs, and crossed the border from Somalia to Kenya. My father was a diplomat, and people who worked for the government were being executed or put in jail. I was a 16-year-old who’d never been on her own and never worked. All of a sudden, I was without my family and on my own in a foreign country,” she tells PEOPLE.
That experience led to her supporting refugees via her role as the first-ever global ambassador for CARE, a non-profit organization that fights global poverty.
“If it wasn’t for non-government agencies [like CARE] who protected me and checked on me every day to make sure I was okay, protecting girls and women especially, I don’t know what my trajectory would have been,” says Iman. “I’ve never forgotten them.”
Iman says “CARE is a humanitarian organization fighting global poverty by helping refugees with emergency relief and supporting women and girls,” says Iman. “If you empower a woman, she will empower not only her family but also her community and her country at large. Women and girls really are the caretakers of a whole nation.”
READ MORE: The Irony of the Accusation of ‘Playing Politics with People’s Lives’
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— Iman Abdulmajid (@The_Real_IMAN) October 9, 2020
The fashion icon notes that refugees “come from war-torn places that are not safe, where their communities and their families are not safe. What people don’t understand about refugees is that they are like all of us, looking for a better way to live, a safe way to raise their children, with the same dreams and desires we all have,” she explains.
“We do become part of the society, of the nation that takes us in,” Iman adds. “I’m an American citizen. I’m grateful to America to have given me a home and a career. I love this country. America is a nation made of immigrants. So Americans are the first people who should understand what an immigrant and what a refugee is.”
Iman says her efforts have also been inspired by late Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom she met earlier this year.
“Something that will never leave me, is something she said and that was: ‘In my long life, I have seen great changes, and that’s what makes me an optimist for the future.'”
Iman says “We cannot lose hope.If history has taught us anything, it’s that we should not repeat our old mistakes and there is always room for change.”
“Seeing all the young people now at the forefront of climate change, the fight against global poverty, speaking out for racial justice, that keeps me optimistic,” she says. “They’re not waiting for us. They’re going to take their own path and they are making the changes that we need to make.”
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