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