This World Refugee Day, the IRC has partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate galleries and the Victoria and Albert Museum to celebrate refugee artists and entrepreneurs—and to show what would be lost without their contributions.

Born to parents who fled violence in Congo, Patrick and George became the first of their family to attend college. They are working to counter negative rhetoric about refugees in the United States and inspire other refugees to pursue their dreams.

Only days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed a swath of the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the International Rescue Committee dispatched an emergency team of relief experts to Louisiana. For the first time in its 73-year history, the organization responded to a humanitarian crisis in the United States. 

In 1991, Muyambo Marcel Chishimba was forced to flee his home in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Today, he is rebuilding his life—and his art career—in New Jersey.