Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR), the Guilford College–founded initiative that helps colleges and universities host refugee families, is celebrating its 10th year with a uniquely Quaker celebration of hope, belonging and shared humanity.

The celebration will take place at New Garden Friends Meeting, 801 New Garden Road in Greensboro, and will feature live original music, inspiring stories, food trucks and, of course, a birthday cake.

ECAR founder Diya Abdo, Lincoln Financial Professor of English at Guilford, says the event is meant to be “a very Quakerly celebration – a community-based, fellowship-based and full of joy.”

The celebration will feature an original musical composition by Carolyn Hall entitled “Freedom’s Tree,” written especially for the anniversary and inspired by Guilford’s historic Underground Railroad tree, a large Tulip Poplar in the Guilford Woods.

“We really want to focus on Guilford’s history as a place of refuge,” Diya says, “and its long and deep involvement in supporting vulnerable individuals.”

Guests will also view a short documentary created as part of ECAR’s two-year oral history project. The film, about one of the refugee families hosted at Guilford, captures the profound human connections that have defined the program over the past decade. “It’s a brief, very moving, beautiful documentary,” Diya says.

Diya will share about ECAR’s journey and Wess Daniels, the College’s William R. Rogers Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies, will discuss the Underground Railroad.

Local immigrant vendors will sell food and artwork during the event, with ticket sales helping support ECAR’s ongoing work in the Greensboro community.

Tickets can be purchased online, but Diya says “if you can’t afford a ticket, please show up anyway. This celebration belongs to everyone.”

Founded at Guilford College in September 2015, ECAR began as a small campus-based effort to house newly arrived refugees. Today, it has grown into a national movement with more than 20 colleges and universities serving as welcoming spaces for displaced families.

“When we started, it was just about Guilford College,” Abdo reflected. “But we called it Every Campus A Refuge because we already had a sense that this was something of a calling — not just for Guilford, but for higher education as a whole. Ten years later, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved, despite significant challenges to refugee resettlement, including two presidential administrations and a global pandemic.”

Abdo says the anniversary is as much a look forward as it is a celebration of the past.

“We want to remind people that the work of welcome is ongoing,” she said. “Each act of generosity — every donation, every volunteer hour, every open door — adds up to a world that is kinder and more just.”