Wednesday, April 12, 2017 // The Statement
6B

Antara Afrin’s small stature belies her ambi-

tious dreams. A mentor and role model to 
aspiring doctors from underrepresented back-
grounds, she plans to make medicine more 
accessible to people like her in the United States.

Antara is the undergraduate president of the 

University of Michigan Medical School’s Doc-
tors of Tomorrow, a program that sparks interest 
in underrepresented minority students in health 
fields and provides the resources students need 
to be successful in pursuing medical careers. 
Antara currently tutors public school students 
in Detroit.

Antara’s involvement with DoT started in 

2012, her senior year of high school, when it 
was established by Jonathan Finks, the Medical 
School’s associate professor of surgery. Though 
it was intended only for freshmen back in the 
day, Antara was nevertheless encouraged to 
attend events by Finks, whom she considers one 
of her role models.

“I feel like, as a student coming from the city 

of Detroit, I definitely had experiences with peo-
ple (who) as soon they find out I’m from Detroit, 
they probably are like … ‘Do you want to go to X 
career instead of medicine?’ ” Antara said. “Dr. 
Finks is one of those people who’s just like, ‘You 
want to be a doctor? You’re going to be a doctor. 
And I’m going to help you in any way possible to 
make sure you’re a doctor.’ ”

Antara took such a liking to DoT that she 

opted to join as an undergraduate representative 
at the University. During her sophomore year, 
she realized the DoT program only mentored 
freshmen and did not follow up with them.

“We work with these ninth graders, but then 

we just let them go,” Antara said. “That’s not how 
this pipeline from high school to medical school 
should work … we can’t just stop midway.”

To alleviate this problem, Antara created 

DoT Rising, which continues to mentor students 

throughout high school. This year, eight of the 
first DoT students who were freshmen in 2012 
enrolled as freshman at the University.

“It’s amazing because these students, I’ve 

seen them when I was a senior in high school,” 
Antara said. “And now to see them as a senior 
at UM … I see them all involved and doing great 
things on campus already, it makes me happy.”

Antara also started DoT Succeed, which 

encourages those who benefit from the pro-
gram in high school to teach high schoolers once 
they’re in college.

As a graduate of Cass Technical High School 

in Detroit, Antara works on a daily basis to bridge 
the gap between the high schoolers and Medical 
School students who participate in DoT. She ref-
erenced several instances in which her experi-
ence as a former Cass student provided her with 
an important perspective some of the medical 
students who participate in the program lacked.

“We were planning our end-of-the-year event, 

and at first someone was like, ‘We should proba-
bly hold it on a weekday,’ ” Antara recalled. “And 
I was like, ‘if we want parents there we can’t hold 
it on a weekday because a lot our students, their 
parents work jobs in manufacturing … if you’re 
coming from a lower-income background, you 
don’t want your parents to have to take off a day 
off for you and to have that pressure, so I was 
able to say no.”

Despite her large presence in the organi-

zation, Antara remains a humble figure. She 
explained that she prefers an inclusive environ-
ment in which everyone’s opinion is carefully 
considered, especially those who may not be 
inclined to speak in public.

“Usually when you lay down a problem the 

first person to answer will be the really extro-
verted, really outgoing person who answers the 
question,” Antara said. “However, you’ll have the 
greatest ideas in a person who’s really quiet.”

Antara’s Islamic faith and commitment to 

social justice guide her through life. Her mother 
always told her that she must expand her bound-
aries and discover knowledge, as that is what the 
Quran encourages all Muslims to do.

“It’s funny because when people see that I’m 

Muslim-American, they immediately assume, 
‘Oh, she’s oppressed,’ ” Antara said. “But then 
I’m like, ‘No, I aspire to these goals because I feel 
like that’s what my religion tells me. My religion 
tells me to help others and it tells me to be more 
knowledgeable.’ ”

In the future, Antara plans to establish a net-

work of medical clinics in underserved areas 
that take into account the social and cultural 
needs of the community. For example, a clinic in 
a predominantly Muslim area where physicians 
and nurses know what to expect during the fast-

ing season of Ramadan. Antara explained that 
minorities and immigrants have been under-
served throughout the history of the United 
States, and it’s about time that their needs are 
being met too.

“I don’t want to just be the friendly neighbor-

hood physician,” Antara said. “I also want to be 
a leader in medicine … I just don’t want to serve 
just one patient, I want to serve a community.”

Antara is enrolling in a supply-chain man-

agement MBA program at Michigan State 
University starting in August to learn how to 
open the clinics, then plans to obtain her MD. 
She hopes to continue being a figure students 
from underrepresented groups can follow 
and identify with.

“I just want to let them know that they’re 

just as capable,” she said.

Antara Afrin

The images, by now, are familiar. A baby washed 

ashore a beach. A young boy shellshocked by mor-
tar fire. Streams of mothers and children and grief-
stricken fathers, displaced from their homes, and 
fleeing what many now call the worst humanitarian 
disaster of our time.

For most students, the global refugee crisis is all 

at once pressing and overwhelming, both ubiquitous 
and distant. The victories of protest and demonstra-
tion can feel short-lived, especially when placed 
against a backdrop of geopolitical chaos on two dif-
ferent continents and a federal administration plac-
ing restrictions on refugees’ entry into the country.

LSA senior Nicole Khamis also watched the 

vicious cycle of election season rhetoric around 
refugee resettlement whirl last summer, but the 
scenes of tragedy were more than just sobering to 
her. Working at an international nonprofit in Jor-
dan, being a daughter of Palestinian refugees and 
hailing from a family full of asylum seekers, Khamis 
saw herself.

“These people are traces of who I am,” she said. 

“Or could have been. I couldn’t walk away.”

And thus, the Michigan Refugee Assistance 

Program was born.

In its first year on campus, MRAP has held 

nearly a dozen teach-ins, fundraising drives 
totaling $5,000, and held a refugee panel cap-
stone event, all with a board operating at full 
capacity and membership base of close to 100 
students.

The group’s most pivotal achievement, 

though, isn’t quite quantifiable. One hundred 
sixty-three refugees moved into Washtenaw 
County last year, and resettlement agencies 

expect that number to double in the 2017 fiscal year. 
By connecting students to volunteer opportunities 
with families themselves and state advocacy efforts, 
MRAP — under Khamis’ leadership — has succeed-
ed in reframing the refugee crisis as an urgent, local 
priority.

Last summer, she quipped, was “the perfect 

storm.” Khamis was halfway through her intern-
ship at the State Department when the idea of a 
refugee advocacy group on campus came to her, 
and she wasted no time in roping in seasoned stu-
dent organizers to back her fledgling project. She 
noted both the state of Michigan — with one of the 
highest resettlement rates of Syrian refugees in the 
country — and the University of Michigan — with 
an untapped pool of more than 50,000 diverse stu-
dents, faculty and staff and storied history of activ-
ism — represented the ideal site for MRAP’s mission.

Jewish Family Services, a local resettlement 

agency, was also eager to replenish its depleted 
volunteer force, and quickly signed on. Still, the 
night before the group’s Facebook launch, Khamis 
couldn’t sleep.

“I was so nervous,” she said. “I thought no one 

would sign up, or that it wouldn’t last.”

More than 200 people applied to volunteer with-

in MRAP’s first month of existence.

Today, MRAP has carved out a niche on campus, 

and is even regarded by external organizations as 
one of the most reliable sources of volunteers in the 
area. Khamis worked with a contact in the Detroit 
Mayor’s Office to form a pilot partnership with the 
city’s refugee housing program run by its Office 
of Immigrant Affairs. Groups of trained students, 
accompanied by a translator, travel each week to 
meet with refugee families and act as welcoming 
liaisons. These sessions in cultural orientation can 
include anything from trips to the grocery store to 
filling out tax forms. This summer, Khamis will be 
working with the DMO to bring the program to 
other universities.

When asked about her favorite memory with 

MRAP, Khamis immediately smiled.

“The best moment (was) getting the address 

for my own family,” she recounted. “I remember 
parking the car and seeing their house and it was 
just a plain, small, white house in Detroit. Nothing 
would’ve told you that there was a recently resettled 
refugee family from Syria in there. I remember 
walking up and being scared of offending them … 
or their dignity … I was nervous. And that moment, 
that two-second interval where I knocked on the 
door and waited, was really filled with anxiety for 
me. Then they opened the door. And immediately, 
they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, come in,’ and just com-
pletely accepted me with open arms. We ended up 
talking for, like, six hours.”

These human interactions are at the core of Kha-

mis’s vision, and compose much of MRAP’s strat-

egy of proximity and reciprocity. The families, she 
explained, benefit from the network of relationships 
and knowledge volunteers offer, while students 
become more actively engaged in breaking down 
stereotypes about refugees.

“We’re one of the only student organizations 

working with families directly and advocating with 
empathy,” she said. “What we’ve done really well is 
to channel students’ energy and desire to be on the 
right side of things. We make sure they’re doing 
work, but always with the right intentions.”

As Khamis looks toward graduation and her 

upcoming Fulbright program in Jordan next year, 
she highlighted the magnitude and sustainability of 
MRAP as critical developments.

“This work is heavy,” she said. “And I took on 

a lot of it … but this has to live on. There are still 
people here that need our help. There’s an ebb 
and flow in any organization, but the mission 
stays.”

Khamis credited MRAP as the catalyst in her 

journey “coming full circle” at the University: 
She knows now to leverage her own identity to 
connect with, and uplift, those with less privi-
lege.

“I learned to make good on the opportunities 

I have,” she said. “We’re undoing a paralysis this 
year, and I’ve seen so much faith and resilience in 
the face of impossibility.”

Other images, now, are familiar to Khamis. 

Rooms crowded with students, faculty, and staff 
diligently taking notes on the resettlement pro-
cess. Trips to Washington, D.C., and the United 
Nations to present MRAP’s model of a student 
movement. And a pot of tea, shared on a cold 
winter day, in a family’s new home.

BY ANDREW HIYAMA, Daily Staff Reporter

BY ISHITO MORI, Daily Staff Reporter

Nicole Khamis

