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Mary Maker recounts fleeing South Sudan, rising from Kakuma camp to co-found program that placed refugees at top universities
Summary
Mary Maker, a UNHCR goodwill ambassador who grew up in Kakuma Refugee Camp, told United Nations host Melissa Fleming how education, a TEDx talk and the nonprofit Elemeisha Kakuma helped place roughly 60 refugee students at top universities with more than $20 million in scholarships.
Melissa Fleming, introducing the Awake at Night episode, sat down with Mary Maker, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), who described fleeing South Sudan as a child and later forging a path through education that led her from Kakuma Refugee Camp to U.S. colleges and advocacy work.
Maker said she was born Niryak Makir, a name she explained means "war," and described early childhood memories of Antonov planes and dug trenches used to shelter from bombing. She recalled the camp's multinational classrooms and the surprise of seeing a piano or electricity for the first time when she left Kakuma to attend a boarding school in Nakuru, Kenya.
Her TEDx Kakuma talk in 2017 brought international attention, Maker said, and helped open doors to university admissions abroad. "The talk got, like, over 1,000,000 views," she said, and she later enrolled at a U.S. college. She described the shift from camp life to campus as transformative but emphasized that most refugee children lack the same opportunities.
Maker co-founded a nonprofit called Elemeisha Kakuma ("educate Kakuma") while in college, and told Fleming that the organization has "now placed close to 60 students to one of the top universities in the world with over $20,000,000 in scholarship just in under 6 years." She framed the work as translating camp contexts for universities and persuading admission offices and donors to see refugee students as qualified candidates.
Throughout the interview Maker emphasized education as a route to dignity and inclusion. "Refugees do bring so much to the community," she said, adding that personal visibility and access to decision-making tables are crucial for long-term change. Maker also described continuing creative work in New York, including plays and poetry, and read her piece "The Exceptional Refugee," which contrasts celebrated individual success with the ongoing struggles of many silent refugees.
Maker now lives in New York and continues advocacy as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador while pursuing creative and educational projects. The episode closes with Fleming thanking Maker for sharing her experiences and for her ongoing work on behalf of refugees.
