Rayan Mohamed, a sophomore film major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, has been selected as a 2023-2024 Imagining America/Joy of Giving Something Fellow.
Rayan Mohamed
The program aims to elevate photography and digital media as pathways for undergraduate students to pursue their careers and make a difference in their communities. Fellows receive a $2,000 tuition scholarship as well as mentorship for a community project. Mohamed plans to make an ethnographic film focusing on the mental health of first-generation refugee youth.
Mohamed was born in Somalia and spent several years in an Ethiopian refugee camp before moving to Syracuse as a grade-schooler in 2014. “I always wanted to start a discussion about the mental health of refugees,” she says. “This project is important to me because the topic of mental health in some cultures is found to be taboo, shame and embarrassing.”
The project will entail a series of interviews, workshops and creative art making, according to Mohamed. Participants will be asked questions such as, “What does it mean to be a first-generation refugee?” and “How do you heal from trauma?”
“I would love to give total control of creativity to these students and how they want to tell their stories to the world,” Mohamed says.
Before arriving on campus, Mohamed attended Syracuse City Schools and, as a junior at Henninger High School, participated in the Narratio Fellowship and Artist-in-Residence program, a storytelling and leadership initiative that provides resettled refugee youth in Syracuse with the tools and resources to share their histories and experiences through artistic expression.
The Imagining America consortium brings together people from a range of disciplines and industries “to imagine, study and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world.” Syracuse University is a member institution.
In addition to working on her project, Mohamed will attend Imagining America’s National Gathering—held this year in Providence, Rhode Island—and participate in regular, virtual learning exchanges. She will also benefit from connection to the consortium’s national network of scholars, artists and community organizers.
