RIO DE JANEIRO — Germans rolled luggage into the Olympic Village, Slovaks stood proudly at the raising of their national flag, and a delegation from Benin posed for photos in yellow floral prints and lobster-red hats. Nearby, a woman from Kenya, barely five feet and all but unnoticed, signed off on her project to give an Olympic home to athletes who had none of their own.

“Peace, unity through sports,” she wrote on a mural.

Tegla Loroupe will participate in her fourth Olympics, this time not as a groundbreaking marathoner but as a peace ambassador bringing attention and compassion to the global refugee crisis.

She is the leader of a group of 10 displaced athletes, known as the Refugee Olympic Team. It will march Friday in the opening ceremony, carrying the Olympic flag, serenaded by the Olympic anthem.

Five of those athletes prepared for the Rio Games at a training camp operated by Loroupe in the hills outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. “I think I have the strength to prove that even small people can do something big,” she said.