FREE PUBLIC LECTURE

       Inspired: from Africa to Louisville
                                Filder Auma, UofL student

                                                    5pm, Monday, Feb. 15, 2016
                      Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library, U. of Louisville Belknap campus
                                                           Refreshments served

                                                                                           Link to campus map

The lecture will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.



co-sponsored by Pallas Chapter of Mortar Board National Senior Honorary,
   with funding by the
Dept. of Womens & Gender Studies
and the
Dept of Psychological and Brain Sciences



SNOW DATE: THU. FEB. 18, 2016 AT 7PM, CHAO AUDITORIUM.

Personal stories are an opportunity of self-expression. My story is like a human mouth, full of bacteria.
But, it is also the very thing that inspired me to be the person I always want to be. I was able to shift
from reacting to the pain life throws at me to being responsible to the things I love most: to become a
mother to children of rapes. As a survivor of torture and chronic illness and a blind student of the
University of Louisville, I feel confident, resilient, and empowered. My journey is unlike that of others
who are differently ``abled", of color, poor, large, queer, or who make bad or dangerous choices, feel
depressed, or even just act simply silly or are made the objects of disparaging discourses that disempower
them. My story ultimately reinforces a single desirable form of my future goal: to bring hope and smile
to children, and encourage many people to recognize their importance.


Filder Auma was born in Uganda, and earned a business degree at Makerere University in
Kampala in 1986.  She served from 1982-94 as a social worker at several UN refugee camps:
Walda, Thika and Ifo, Kenya, and at a camp in Ethiopia, where she ensured that families with children
were the first priority for the distribution of food, medicine, shelter and other resources.  She moved to
San Diego in 1997, where she worked in retail, volunteered as an English teacher for the
South Sudanese community, and guided them as they adjusted to life in the US and brought up their
children in a new land.  She also worked as a caregiver and nutritional guide with social services,
while also earning an Associate's Degree in Liberal Arts and Social Science at San Diego City College. 
She started her degree in  psychology at UofL in 2013, and began to volunteer at Kentucky Refugee Ministries
in 2014.  With them,  she acts as a mentor for survivors of war torture, educates people how to deal with
their losses and  introduces programs to help them improve their lives.

Further reading:
"The Maltreatment of Women and Children in Kenyan Refugee Camps",
Ronda Porter, 2013, MA thesis, U. Kansas