Meet Little Amal, a 12-foot tall puppet who's touring the country. Here's why...
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00:00It's not just about a puppet, like these are real people and real children who have had
00:09to flee their homes.
00:18Little Amal is a 12 foot tall puppet of a young girl who's 10 years old who had to flee
00:23her home in Aleppo in Syria in search of a home.
00:26Little Amal invites us all to think about the people who are displaced by violence,
00:31by war, by climate change, all the different things that are displacing people around the
00:34world.
00:37We actually housed Ukrainian refugees in France for about two months, so it's something that's
00:49really important to our family, especially in the era of Trump and a lot of the rhetoric
00:53that's thrown out there as far as immigrants and people who need to come to a safe place
00:57out of desperation.
00:58It's important for others of us to stand up and say, no, that's not how we feel, to make
01:02it known to people who need a safe refuge that they have a place to stay, and not only
01:06as far as systems and politics are concerned, but literally homes that they can come to
01:11and find refuge and find family and find food and beds to sleep in.
01:25Oftentimes immigrants, refugees see their story monumentalized, scaled so large through
01:31Little Amal and her story.
01:41This neighborhood in particular has a history of languages, Yiddish, Spanish, Japanese,
01:48Chinese, all these kinds of folks who came together in the Lower East Side in Chinatown.
01:51All of these communities were getting to live together and experience each other, and all
01:55of our laundry hung in the streets.
01:57And so the image comes back from the early 1900s.
02:02We wanted to honor that history and remind people what the history of this place is.
02:06See you at Little Amal!
02:08We love you!
02:10Goodbye, Amal!
02:12We love you!
02:14It was so moving to see her.
02:16There's something about this gorgeous coffin that was made in South Africa.
02:20It's beautiful, and it has so much poignancy and feeling to it.
02:25And it was so beautiful to see her reading the messages.
02:32It's about the plight of refugees and children.
02:37We encourage everyone to keep learning about locally what's happening in their communities,
02:41who's coming in.
02:42Here in New York City, we have people coming in from the border in Texas.
02:46And we're having to relocate all those folks and find resources to take care of them.
02:50Little Amal reminds us to take care of each other, to welcome each other, to make space
02:54for each other, so that we can truly make a difference in other people's lives.
02:58A place to be their best selves.
03:02Little Amal.
03:03We love you.