April 21 2015 Lynne Ashdown - The Syrian Refugee Crisis

 

THE SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS
Lynne Ashdown

​http://lynneashdown.com/about-lynne/
In the three years after the uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebonon and Jordon hit 3 million.  Combined with the estimated 6 to 9 million internally displaced within the country, roughly one half of Syria’s population have lost or fled from their jobs and homes. Over 200,000 have been killed since the March 2011 uprising degraded into full scale civil war….in fact it is now roughly 6 separate and independent wars.  There is no end in sight for the present refugees, and more are pouring in at roughly 2000 a day. This is the largest humanitarian disaster in the twenty first century and is in some ways comparable to some of the worse disasters during WWII.  The purpose of this talk is educational: Lynn Ashdown will share from personal experiences of living in the Middle East and witnessing some of the human suffering.

Lynne Ashdown is author of the recently published “One American Woman Fifty Italian Men”, a journey of Cycling, Love and Will.  She has studied music and art and is an adventurer. She recently proctored a Great Decisions, Syrian Refugee course on Foreign Policy Issues.  

 
 
 
Bio for Lynne Ashdown
 
Lynne Ashdown, who divides her time between Tucson and the Bay Area of California, grew up in the hills of Oakland, pretending to be an explorer. She went further than her parents ever knew, igniting her need to discover the world.
She married young, and found herself and her two young children on a plane to Libya in 1964, to join her husband who had taken a job as a pilot for the Libyian Aviation Company, where he would ferry oil company personnel back and forth from Tripoli to the desert oil facilities. This was her first time out of her American, backyard barbeque culture, when life was simple. She was shocked at the realities of Libyan Islamic life and the poverty of the country. She underwent an earth-shaking metamorphosis of her view of the world.
Later, divorced, she raised her two boys alone, becoming a singer-guitarist in clubs around the Bay Area and Nevada. At age 39 her mother offered to pay her way through college if she would give up singing professionally. She grabbed the deal, and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1979 with a degree in Development Studies, combining political science, economics, and studies of cultural change.
No matter what work she did, she ended up writing, realizing that this was her true vocation. She has written for magazines and newspapers ever since, and is working on her second book about a woman who ill-advisedly accepts a book contract to write a cycle touring guidebook for Italy, and what happens to her in the process. Her first book is entitled, “One American Woman Fifty Italian Men,” about a woman who cycles with a group of Italian cyclists1000 miles from Verona, Italy, to Warsaw, Poland, in just 10 days. They were among the first people to venture into Eastern Europe when the borders were opened. Both are true stories. She sees herself as a combination of Irma Bombeck, Peter Mayle (A Year in Provence), and Calamity Jane.
Lynne has traveled by bicycle through much of Europe and, halfway across this country, alone. In 2005 she walked across northern Spain on the Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage Trail.
She considers herself a citizen of the world, and hurts for people at the trauma it, and they, are undergoing.
 
 
Sponsors