Meet Little Amal

Meet Little Amal, a 12-foot tall puppet who's touring the country. Here's why...

Transcript

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.