The PEOPLE AUSTRALIA FORGOT
When entrepreneur and former fashion designer Fleur Wood heard that 1250 asylum seekers from Australia’s off-shore detention centres were being resettled in the US, she was struck with empathy.
It was 2016 and the men, women and children who had spent years languishing on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island would now be transferred to a country on the other side of the world as part of a deal between the Australian government and the Obama administration. After so much uncertainty and despair, this was their chance to start over – but not without enormous challenges.
“I knew what a big ask it is to resettle in a foreign country,” says Wood, who had moved from Sydney to New York with her husband and children in 2013. “I came here with a partner, a job, my family, money in the bank. I just couldn’t imagine what life was going to be like for these refugees who had no money, who sometimes had little education, a language barrier, and who were suffering severe PTSD from
