Author: Emily Giambalvo

Refugee resettlement and sports personal story memo

I tried to write this memo in a way that it could be applied for either Fugees Family or Clarkson High School cross country team. I will settle on one of those routes next week after I talk to the coaches and see what type of access I could get.

Broad topic: The intersection between sports and refugee resettlement

Key questions to consider and how to answer them:

  • What is it like to acclimate to a new country as a refugee child?
    • Talk to high-school aged students and their families
    • Ask athletic coaches how sports affect the process of a student adjusting to a new place
    • What is it like to become a part of a public high school? Is it comforting to be at a high school that has a high population of refugees?
  • How do refugee children get involved with sports?
    • Do parents see it as something that will help them be part of the community? Is it the child that initiates the desire to play?
    • What challenges arise if the sport the child plays is not a sport that was present in their home country?
    • How much does it cost a family to pay for a kid to be involved with sports? Are refugee children ever kept from sports due to the financial burden?
  • What is the team dynamic like and what messages does it send to the athletes and observers?
    • How many different home countries are represented on the team?
    • Are there ever language barriers?
    • Were the coaches refugees or immigrants? How do they lead a diverse team of students adjusting to a new life?
    • How do coaches and teammates help throughout the acclimating process in ways apart from sports?
  • What makes the cross country team successful, especially since many might not have run cross country prior to moving to the U.S.?
  • How did Clarkston become a hub for refugee resettlement?
    • What are other similar refugee resettlement towns in the United States?
    • What made Clarkston a good fit for immigrants?

Sources:

  • Coaches
  • Athletes
  • Families
  • Teachers who have knowledge of the adjusting process outside of sports
  • Someone unaffiliated with the team or school who has knowledge of Clarkston’s history as a refugee resettlement town

Possible multimedia ideas:

  • Maybe a graph that shows the demographic makeup of Clarkson High School
  • Timeline or maps that show where the athletes come from and how and when they got to the U.S.

FiveThirtyEight Katie Ledecky graphic

This is an old story, but it’s one of my favorites that FiveThirtyEight has ever done. It simply does a great job of telling a story. It quantifiably explains Katie Ledecky’s dominance and visually displays it in ways that are easy to ready. Headlines at FiveThirtyEight are typically fantastic, and so is this one — Somebody Get Katie Ledecky a Time Machine. In my opinion, the best infographic in this story is the one that explores what was referenced in that headline. It shows a timeline of when Ledecky would have been the fastest swimmer on the planet. For people who don’t understand the sport, these infographics effectively convey Ledecky’s swimming success.

I also liked the depiction of Ledecky vs. History because it showed the methodology behind determining when Ledecky would have been the best in the world. However, I think it would have been better if all six graphs used labels on the x-axis. It’s a bit difficult to understand until you scroll down and see the years. In Introduction: Infographics and Visualization, it said, “Graphics, charts, and maps aren’t just tools to be seen, but to be read and scrutinized.” FiveThirtyEight’s graphics intend for readers to do just that. While this story on Ledecky is simple, it still requires some analysis on the readers’ part in order to be properly understood. You can’t rely on a quick glance when it’s more than just a bar chart.

As mentioned in the Visualizing Trouble article, one of the most common issues I see with infographics is that people overdo it when it comes to colors, amount of data displayed, etc. FiveThirtyEight usually does a decent job of keeping its infographics simple (sometimes I still think the site makes graphics too complex). Particularly in this one about Ledecky, it’s very simple and that’s partially why I think this story is so strong. It’s easy to follow and understand. When people cannot understand a graphic, it’s impossible to tell a story.

This is a different graphic, but FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast is incredible. When I read The Fundamental Principles of Analytic Design, my mind jumped to this forecast because it perfectly epitomized the section about multivariables. The more variables you have, the better your predictions are and the more likely you are to tell meaningful stories.

Big 10 IRS information

Conference: Big 10

Year of report: 2014

Financial categorySubcategoryAmount
Total Revenue$338,919,854
Program service revenue$337,386,778
Investment income$1,075,861
Other revenue$457,215
Total Expenses$336,829,160
Grants and similar amounts paid$317,178,419
Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits$7,091,226
Other expenses$12,559,275
Distribution to members
University of Illinois$27,560,678
Indiana University$27,565,677
University of Iowa $27,580,906
University of Michigan $27,614,677
Michigan State University $27,615,678
University of Minnesota $27,569,677
University of Nebraska $16,497,152
Northwestern University $27,552,677
Ohio State University $27,589,678
Pennsylvania State University $24,817,264
Perdue University $27,557,678
University of Wisconsin $27,656,677
Salary of commissioner
James E Delany$2,056,368 (base compensation)
Highest paid employees
James E Delany, commissioner$2,056,368 (base compensation)
Morton Schapiro, director$883,747 (base compensation)

Various story ideas to explore refugees in Clarkston

Since I feel pretty confident that I’ll my individual project will center around refugees in Clarkston, Georgia, and how their lives are affected by sports, these are five variations of how that could play out.

  1. As of now, my top choice for a story would focus on the children and their families who are part of the Fugees Family soccer team. I’d like to look at what motivated their parents to have them join a sports team and whether that has helped the children acclimate to the community. I would explore what type environment this soccer team provides and the challenges they have faced since arriving in the United States. For this angle, the emphasis would be on the families’ adjustment in the new area and how soccer has benefited their kids.
  2. Another angle for a story about Fugees Family centers around the founder, Luma Mufleh. She has an interesting background, as she grew up in a wealthy family in Jordan. She noticed that she grew up being handed anything she wanted while other children were far less fortunate. That motivated her to found Fugees Family in 2004. This is the angle that has been primarily covered by other news outlets, which makes it less attractive for me to write. I think an angle that focuses on the players and their families would be more compelling, even if it is more difficult to reach the sources.
  3. Finally, a story could focus on the combination of Fugees Family and Fugees Academy, the academic component of the soccer program that was added in 2008. In 2016, the school graduated its first senior class and 86 students are currently enrolled. This story would look at how a soccer team grew into something that affects the children on a larger scale. It would be very interesting to dive into the dynamic of an all-refugee school. That being said, this could be a small piece of any Fugees Family story and might not warrant an entire story.
  4. As a solid backup plan, there are other routes I could go to explore the intersection between refugees and sports in Clarkston, Georgia. During my reporting for the story I wrote last year, I found out that refuges made up about 90 percent of Clarkston High School’s cross country team. The concept of working with a team from a public high school would be interesting since it directly displays how these children are becoming part of a new community. The boys’ cross country team won the Georgia 5A state title in both 2014 and 2015, so that would add a strong athletic component to the story.
  5. Even though the cross country team has been successful at the state level, another similar story would be to look into the environment at Clarkston High School, using the football team as a lens. I’d assume that the makeup of the football team is somewhat similar to that of cross country since the percentage of students who are refugees at Clarkston is very high. In the last two seasons, Clarkston only won one game and it is off to an 0-2 start this year. Therefore, there wouldn’t be the draw of having athletic accomplishments like the cross country team, but in general people are more interested in football. I don’t know how reliable some of these sites are, but a few places show the football roster only having 12 players. That could make this an interesting story.

Refugees in Clarkston, Fugees Family background reading

I’m hoping to look into refugee resettlement, particularly in Clarkson, Georgia. Through that I want to explore how sports play a role in the lives of refugee children. I also want to see how being on a team like Fugees Family affects the lives of the players, parents and coaches. In addition, I want to do broad research about the city of Clarkston, how it became a refugee town and what it is like to be apart of that community.

I first started my story search with the broad topic by looking for articles about refugees in Clarkson without the sports component. I found this story about a Syrian family that was part of the first group of Syrian refugees to come to Georgia. It also said that “Gov. Nathan Deal has vowed to block other Syrian refugees from coming into the state,” which is important background. About 3,000 refugees move to Clarkson a year, but widespread acceptance across Georgia isn’t typical.  I then read this article that details that “Georgia cannot exclude Syrian refugees from resettlement in the state or deny them federally funded benefits,” as attorney general Sam Olens wrote in an official opinion last year. Some of the fear of refugee resettlement stems from acts of terrorism around the world. In 2016, Deal withdrew the order stopping Syrian refugees from resettling in Georgia.

I found this article about Luma Mufleh, who is the founder of Fugees Family. Mufleh spoke at a high school in Virginia and she explained some of the roots of Fugees Family. She grew up in a wealthy family in Jordan and said, “Everything I wanted was handed to me.” Similarly, this is a story written when Mufleh spoke at Illinois Wesleyan University. When she saw kids playing soccer in Clarkston without shoes, she felt motivated to begin a program that could help.

Looking on a worldwide scope, I read this story about refugee athletes competing in the 2016 Olympics. A year prior, IOC president Thomas Bach said at the UN General Assembly that “these refugee athletes will be welcomed to the Olympic Games.”

Research and planning throughout my reporting

I’m obsessively organized in most areas of my life, and I do the same with reporting and writing. I like the comfortableness of having a routine and that’s how I typically produce my best work. Even though the process is sometimes elongated (for a story I report for a month or longer) or condensed (when doing 15 minutes of research prior to football availability), the steps stay consistent.

I have a reminders list on my computer that is called “Stories to write.” It’s essentially anything I’m curious about and think could turn into a story. This reminds me of how Clark said he had bins with big-picture themes. I leisurely explore those topics, simply because I’m interested, and slowly I’ll make additions to the bullet point, such as a possible source to talk to, a stat I need to I look up and sometimes even an entire lede.

I read a lot. I do a ton of background research, particularly if it’s a story that’s fairly large. It gives me a feel for the angles that haven’t been explored and it helps me create better questions. This is the step I never skip, even if it’s just rapid research at a football availability. I don’t write unless I’ve read something on that topic. In terms of reading to become a better writer, I try to do that whenever I have the time. There are a few stories that I’ll read every month or so simply because I think they are so well-written that there’s no way I can’t continually learn something from it.

For a few of my biggest stories I’ve done, I print my transcriptions. I read them, highlight and make notes. I constantly ask myself, “What is the story? Who are the characters? Why do they act they way they do? Is there a conflict?” That’s helped me more than anything, just asking myself, “What is the story here?” I outline because in the long run it saves time. I outline when I’m on deadline, and I outline when I have all the time in the world. I don’t do sophisticated Roman numerals or anything of that nature, but I think of all the main points I need to hit and write them down. That way, it’s easier to make structural changes. When I write, it’s quick because of the work I’ve done on the back end.

Easley High School archived story

Finding archived stories about my high school in Easley, South Carolina, was a bit difficult. There’s plenty of news from recent years, but once I searched for news from 2009 or prior, the selection was scarce. I did find this story about an Easley High School teacher who was charged with four counts of soliciting minors. Yes, it’s a very gloomy story. But it interested me because I had no clue. I was about to enter middle school at the time this story was written, so it seems reasonable to think that I would have heard about this, but I don’t remember anything. I like looking back and thinking about how I consumed news at different ages. I feel like around this time, I definitely wasn’t consuming online news regularly. However, my mom also said she doesn’t remember this, so it might have been extremely under-covered.

The story was published on GoUpstate.com in July of 2007. It reported that Curtis Ballard, who was a science teacher at Easley High School, was charged with soliciting sex through the Internet. He was caught by deputies posing as 13-year-old girls. He had been teaching at the school for over 20 years and taught biology, anatomy and physiology. I also noticed the lack of coverage on this incident from other local news publications, which surprised me.

Questions about Fugees Family

Topic: Fugees Family soccer program

These are the questions I would use to guide my search as to why Clarkson is a refugee resettlement town and how Fugees Family affects those in the community.

  • Why Clarkson? What made this city become a hub for refugee resettlement?
  • What are other similar refugee resettlement towns in the United States?
  • How many children participate in sports in Clarkston? More, less or about the same as comparable Georgia towns? (This might be hard to quantify.)
  • What value do the parents see in having their children play on a sports team?
  • When was Fugees Family created?
  • Why was Fugees Family created?
  • How many different home nations are represented on Fugees Family team?
  • Are the coaches also refugees? If not, how did they get involved with this program?
  • What led to Fugees Family expansion into academic programs?
  • Are there negative or positive effects of students attending school only with refugees?
  • What are the guidelines for being a member of Fugees Family team?
  • How do sports play a role in refugee resettlement?
  • Are there similar teams in other parts of the United States?
  • How many of the athletes have played soccer prior to Fugees Family?
  • What are the benefit of having all coed teams?
  • What are the time and financial requirements involved with being on the Fugees Family team?
  • What was the impact of having a refugee Olympic time this year in Rio?