Refugee Crisis Origins Reflection

During the course of the semester my group and I reported on the refugee crisis' origins. On our first blog post we decided to focus on the refugee crisis in North Africa and the Middle East's. The refugees in the Middle East are mainly coming from Syria but some are also fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo. Peaceful protests in Syria became a bloodshed due to conflict between the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian government. Citizens of Nigeria flee because of oppression implemented by Boko Haram. These displaced individuals seek asylum in neighboring countries but have also gone out of their way and made journey towards European countries as well as North American countries. On our second post we narrowed our focus to North African countries more closely. We focused our research on Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria. South Sudan gained its' independence from Sudan in 2011 but began having problems within their new found freedom. Book Haram, in turn, has caused thousands of Nigerians to flee. The group kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. Even though the Nigerian government declared a state of emergency little has been done to stop the militant group. Somalia's displaced people are due to the state of violent civil war they are in. On our third and final post we decided to narrow our focus to Syrian refugees and describe the origins of the civil war and go further in depth on ISIS. We explained what ISIS is and how they came to be. We went in depth on the origins of the Syrian cilivl war. 

As a group we created a google document and posted a few links at the beginning of the semester that could be used for research. Those links were very handy to me because I wanted to have the most accurate information and the website was reliable since the one I used most was linked to the UN. Other than those shared sources, I looked up reliable articles to find more accurate information on the topic I was writing about at the time. Working as a group was just another added pressure for me since I did not want to affect my group's grade if my research was not well done. All my research was based on reliable resources and I informed myself well before writing anything. 

This blog assignment was a rollercoaster for me. It being my first group assignment in college. It taught me how to rely on a group of people and collaborate to compose a well written monthly assignment. I had a general idea about the refugee crisis when I first started working on this assignment but now after endless research and group discussions and unanswered questions being completely answered I feel proficient on this topic. I'm glad I was able to work on this topic particularly because I thought I knew what was going on before but by being involved in this project I became aware that I knew absolutely nothing about the crisis. Doing this project during the course of the semester really helped me judge my research in this class and on other classes by classifying good resources and not so good resources.