Soorat Jamshidi

I spent the first 11 years of my life in a refugee camp without even knowing it was one. I didn’t find out until I came to Denmark. I don’t feel foreign. I contribute to society and I feel the same responsibility to the society as people who were born here, and the thought of terror frightens me as much as it frightens everyone else.

In high school I often had arguments with my Danish teacher, who said that my grades would not get any higher as long as my Danish wasn’t any better. Then one day a woman from Jehova’s Witnesses knocked on our door, and I grabbed the chance. I said that I would read her magazine if she would help me with my homework. So every Sunday from second year of high school and until I graduated we met, and gradually my grades improved. This experience showed me that there are opportunities everywhere and I want to pass this on to others. Through my work I meet many people who live isolated and are cut off from society. They are passed from one case worker to another, and they can’t negotiate their way in the system, so a lot of them give up. It is a structural problem, and society carries a big responsibility, but the system can’t solve the problem on its own. People should make an effort themselves. My ambition is to study to be a therapist and open my own clinic, where I can help people spot and seize the opportunities which are available right under their very noses.

32 years / female / in a relationship / child / M.Sc. / consultant / Frederiksberg /born in a refugee camp in Iraq / Kurdish background / came to Denmark as a quota refugee in 1996