Story & Video by Patricia Billinger
When armed men stormed one 9-year-old’s home town in Sudan, she fled for her life — losing contact with her family.
Years later, after living in refugee camps and eventually making it safely to resettle in the United States, this girl — now a young woman — turned to the Red Cross for help seeking out the whereabouts of her long-lost family. Our local Restoring Family Links team took on her case.
Tracking down loved ones across thousands of miles and a decade of conflict is an immense challenge. Every clue can help narrow the search, and determining the specific, last-known whereabouts of family is an important key to starting the search.
In this case, the girl drew a rudimentary map of her memory of her home and where she last saw her family. In this video, we share the detective work our volunteers performed to turn that hand-drawn map into a solid clue to start the search.
To find out more about Red Cross Restoring Family Links, visit http://www.redcross.org/what-we-do/international-services/reconnecting-families .