MOHAMED DIRIE: Hi. My name is Mohamed Dirie. I immigrated from Somalia to the United States. I'm a husband and a father, and I live in Minnesota.
NARRATOR: Mohamed Dirie has come a long way from his native Somalia. Mohamed was just a toddler when civil war broke out. Suddenly, his basic needs for reliable food, water, and shelter were no longer being met, not to mention his immediate need for safety.
MOHAMED DIRIE: We had to get out of there. People were dying left and right. It was either you die, or you survive and you live another day. We went from one refugee area to another until we got to Kenya. We settled there for the next couple of years, but there was really no job opportunities.
NARRATOR: His family eventually came to the United States, joining Mohamed's uncle and other relatives living in Minnesota.
MOHAMED DIRIE: My family thought, oh, my god, hey, we're going to America. America's this land where you can actually get money from a wall, from an ATM. Thankfully, we had family here that know the realities, that understand how to survive in America. Someone helping you through that path was essential.
NARRATOR: Six-year-old Mohamed, who spoke no English, faced his own challenges. The first was finding his way at school.
MOHAMED DIRIE: I saw that every kid went on the bus alone. And I thought, OK, they were able to do it, I can do this too. So I told my mom, let me do this. I can do this. It was to kind of comfort her that I was going to make it just like everyone else was making it.
NARRATOR: In middle school, Mohamed faced occasional bullying.
MOHAMED DIRIE: There were individuals who would make nasty jokes, jokes about the Middle East, et cetera, and my name being Mohamed, and so on.
NARRATOR: But Mohamed wouldn't be held back. With his family providing a constant extrinsic motivation, Mohamed's interest in learning kept him intrinsically motivated.
MOHAMED DIRIE: My family are always pushing me. My mom made me want to graduate. And I also wanted to be able to sustain my own life here. In high school, I started to understand the world isn't easy, that you need to work for it. Then it became my own motivation. It was really up to me to achieve my goals.
NARRATOR: After graduating from college and having established a career, Mohamed was able to start a family, meeting the basic human need for love and affection. Meanwhile, Mohamed gained self-respect and self-confidence working with his neighbors and within his religious community.
MOHAMED DIRIE: In Islam, you have to do good in your community. And I'm always thinking of ways of, OK, how can I give back to the Somali community here? One thing that I'm doing now is giving back to family members in Somalia. I'm sending stipend money each month so that they are able to live comfortably.
There are opportunities here, but you have to work for them. You can definitely find success and be able to get that money from that wall that we're talking about. My family worked hard to get us to a place where there are opportunities. I really wanted to do it for them. And I also wanted to do for myself.