In the inaugural episode of season two of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers speaks with Kristin Davis, internationally acclaimed actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, fresh off a visit to South Sudan to see the organization’s response to the deepening emergency caused by the war in Sudan. Kristin shares how an encounter at a Hollywood party first connected her to UNHCR, and what she witnessed at the Joda border crossing and Renk transit center: families arriving with nothing, safe spaces shuttered due to funding cuts and the gut-wrenching reality of women and children receiving only a high-calorie biscuit as their first meal after harrowing journeys through a war zone. But alongside the devastation, she also found extraordinary resilience in a group of teenage girls reclaiming their voices at a program called Girl Shine, and in a woman named Jacqueline who, after being displaced three times, opened a tea shop and hired her first employee. Kristin and Suzanne reflect on the difference between humanitarianism and politics, what it means to truly see another person and why — no matter where in the world Kristin has traveled — she has never once felt like a stranger.
Topics Discussed:
- How a chance encounter at a Hollywood party connected Kristin to UNHCR and set the course of her advocacy work
- What Kristin witnessed at the Joda border crossing and Renk Transit Center — and what was devastatingly missing
- The human impact of funding cuts: safe spaces closed and hot meals gone for families arriving with almost nothing after violent and dangerous journeys
- Girl Shine: the safe space near Juba where displaced teenage girls are learning to use their voices, understand their rights and imagine different futures
- Jacqueline's tea shop: the story of a woman displaced three times who built a small business from scratch and hired her first employee
- Why Kristin believes humanitarianism must be separated from politics and why it's everyone's responsibility
- What "stranger" means to someone who has never felt like one and the shared humanity that makes that possible
Episode Resources:
