Inside the UNHCR Club's Blurred Box Podcast

Chloe Tsang ‘21 leads the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) club at the OHS. Now, with club members Haven Hunt ‘20, Pooja Kalyan ‘21, and Sophie Mansoor ‘22, they have launched the Blurred Box podcast, which touches on a multitude of topics from OHS to humanitarian crises as well as insights from the podcast members on their experiences as teens in an online high school. 

Chloe Tsang ‘21

Haven Hunt ‘20

Pooja Kalyan ‘21

Sophie Mansoor ‘22

These four members come from all different backgrounds, geographical locations, and interests. Chloe has lived in Hong Kong, Australia, and France and travels all around the world as a tennis player. She also has a passion for mathematics, which drew her to OHS, allowing her to pursue both academics and tennis. Haven was homeschooled from second grade to junior year in high school and joined OHS this year as a senior. Outside of school, she is a competitive horseback rider, and runs her own photography business. Pooja is also involved in competitive sports — figure skating — and found OHS a perfect way to continue with the necessary travel in her sport without missing out on valuable instruction. Sophie, in her first year at the OHS, chose OHS after being homeschooled since 2nd grade for its rigorous courses and flexibility in allowing her to play competitive soccer. 

These OHSers, all from different parts of the US and the world, came together through the UNHCR Club. Chloe started the club after being inspired to share her tennis competition earnings with a worthy cause, the International Refugee Committee (IRC). 

From there, she shares, “Through being involved in this [donating to the IRC], I felt I needed and wanted to do more than fundraising, to bring awareness of the global forced displacement crisis to my school and sporting community. Hence I reached out to the UNHCR and sought a partnership collaboration with them for our school. So in August 2019, the Stanford Online High School UNHCR Club was established!”

She adds, “The mission of the UNHCR Club is to educate students and the youth community about issues related to refugees and internally displaced persons, as they are among the most vulnerable in the world.”

Throughout the course of this year, Chloe, Haven, Pooja, and Sophie began to look for new ways to spread the message of the UNHCR club. Chloe says, “I was trying to think of ways to further expand the UNHCR Club’s efforts to spread awareness of the world’s refugee and humanitarian crisis.” 

After considering the conversational nature of podcasts and the opportunity for a collaborative approach, she chose the podcast as their new platform. She admits, “A podcast probably won’t change the world, [but] it can certainly make your morning commute brighter with humorous, thought‐provoking, and diverse personal experiences and social commentaries.”

What inspired the name Blurred Box? Chloe explains, “We were definitely thinking out of the box for coming up with this idea, and at the same time blurring the lines as to which the usual structure of podcasts generally follow - Blurred Box!” She also teases, “There’s another interesting story regarding the origin of our podcast name, but I suggest tuning in to one of our future episodes for that story.” 

The process in getting the podcast up and running has been full of highlights and challenges. One challenge is that Chloe, Haven, Sophie, and Pooja are spread out all across the US and the world. As a result, Chloe says, “we don’t have the ability to pick up on physical or facial cues in our conversations as easily as one might in a uniform group setting.” They use Skype video calls to overcome this challenge while they record the audio through the Anchor app. 

Another challenge has been defining what they want Blurred Box to be. Haven admits, “It’s difficult to create a friendly, conversational podcast that still manages to discuss really crucial issues with a serious tone, but I think we’re getting the hang of it.” Pooja adds, “We are still navigating this process of starting a podcast and figuring out what appeals to our audience, but we are really enjoying the time that we get to spend talking to each other about topics that we normally wouldn’t get to otherwise.” 

But the podcast process has also been full of highlights as well: “The brightest highlight by far has been getting to know my co-hosts! Chloe, Sophie, and Pooja are all such honest, intelligent, and sweet people and I don’t know if we really would’ve had the opportunity to develop our relationship without this podcast,” Haven says. 

The feeling of community and friendship is definitely mutual. Pooja shares, “I love how easy they are to talk to and that they not only share their own perspectives, but also eagerly listen to everyone else’s.” She reflects on how their chemistry has come naturally for the most part: “We have fun around each other and don’t overpower one another, which are two things that I think have allowed us to work well as a team.”

Sophie adds another highlight, saying “We are able to use this platform to share our opinions and stories on a wide array of topics such as online-schooling, human rights, global events, and sharing a little bit about ourselves as well.” 

All members of the Blurred Box podcast are looking forward to continuing putting out episodes for the remainder of this year (and hopefully for many years to come!). Chloe is looking forward to discussing topics that appeal to Gen Z students: “I hope we can contribute to correcting that our generation isn’t just the ‘anxiety generation whose only concerns are getting good grades and upholding a good social circle’, but that we do pay a lot of attention to the bigger issues, such as climate change and the state of the world (and society) we will be living in.”

She hopes to address these issues in the near future, saying, “Our podcast will include a speaker series in which we invite guests and people working to defend the human rights of refugees and migrants, to discuss topical issues, and get to know humanitarians who are deeply committed to changing the world through their influence, words and actions.”

Interested in getting involved in advocacy? Chloe encourages us, “You can start small and anywhere, but be sure to start now. Don’t let the very intimidating challenges stand in the way of pursuing what you believe in and what is important to you...All you need is an issue you feel strongly about, a passionate attitude, and to be resourceful.”

Haven adds, “Just put yourself out there. The worst thing that can happen from asking to get involved is someone saying “no”, and then you do it anyways or move on. So email local organizations for volunteering information, sign up for newsletters, join clubs (like the UNHCR!), and most importantly, remember you don’t have to be an expert to be an advocate.”

You can listen to the UNHCR’s Blurred Box podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Pocketcasts, and Radiopublic. Follow the UNHCR Club on Instagram at @ohs.unhcrclub.