Luol Deng
© UNHCR/R. Gangale
"I think, generally, people have a good idea that a refugee is someone who fled home, someone who is not in their homeland.
I don’t know if everyone thinks about it the same way. Because I have been through it, I know how tough it can be to be away from home.
I think for most people, the first thing about a refugee that springs to mind is that it means not being able to be in your own homeland."
About Luol
Luol Deng, the British professional basketball star, has been supporting us for several years. In 2007, he pledged to donate USD 50 for every basket he scored during the season. At the time, he was playing for the Boston Celtics, but he moved in 2014 to the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association.
Born in 1985, in what is now South Sudan, Luol and his family fled the war and ended up as refugees in the United Kingdom, where he became a British citizen in 2005. Luol travelled to the United States to study in his teens and joined the Chicago Bulls in 2004 as a forward.
He travelled to South Sudan in 2010 and visited a refugee camp in Kenya with the assistance of UNHCR.