Communities Across the Country Welcome Afghan Refugees
As Afghans who fled the Taliban arrive in cities and towns across the United States, legions of Americans have been stepping up to extend a warm welcome and help them build new lives away from war.
American volunteers have been greeting Afghan families at airports, furnishing apartments with donated goods, teaching English, and helping them find jobs. Their efforts are organized by dozens of grassroots community organizations that have mobilized to respond to the crisis.
The Schultz Family Foundation is proud to support this remarkable humanitarian endeavor through the Mobilizing America for Refugees Fund, which we launched in December 2021 in partnership with the Stand Together Foundation, Starbucks Foundation,Welcome.US and Hello Neighbor.
To date, the Fund has supported 60 organizations in 32 states to increase their capacity to serve individuals and families who have fled Afghanistan. The collaborative effort has so far helped more than 20,000 Afghan refugees and engaged more than 6,000 volunteers – and the impact has been far-reaching.
Here are some highlights:
Welcome Neighbor STL – “Eat Well & Do Good at the Same Time”
In St. Louis, Welcome Neighbor STL runs a food program to support refugee families recently settled in the area. Through the program, refugee women earn a food-handler license, which enables them to work in a commercial kitchen and earn an income by preparing traditional meals from their country of origin. St. Louis residents purchase the meals, and in the process, they learn about the refugees’ food and culture. The initiative fosters a genuine community spirit and helps set the women and their families on a path to greater financial independence. Ninety percent of the proceeds go to the cooks.
During a recent Saturday in late May, Sameera and Ferooza, two Afghan women who arrived in the United States less than a year ago with their husbands and children, were the first Afghan refugees to cater an event for the community. The two women spoke about their gratitude for being so warmly welcomed by their neighbors and for the support they had received in being able to earn an income through catering.
Welcome to America Project – “Changing Fear into Hope”
The Welcome to America Project (WTAP) in Tempe, Arizona, has supported 150 newly-arrived families through the grant, providing warm welcomes, a sense of community as well as key essentials for refugees settling into their new homes. WTAP collects donated items - furniture, furnishings, bikes, computers and then talks to resettled families to ascertain their specific needs. WTAP then organizes “Saturday Welcomes,” which bring together volunteers with varied lived experiences, including other refugees, to help load furniture and other household goods from the WTAP warehouse and deliver them to the homes of the families who have just arrived.
“Integration is interaction,” says Mike Sullivan, WTAP’s community ambassador who leads some of the Saturday Welcomes.” Not only do we change the lives of those who have arrived, we change the lives of those who come out as volunteers…”
Riverview International Center – Building Safe Communities
Riverview International Center in Columbus, OH, is centered around a single street lined with apartment buildings. Since January, 120 Afghans have been relocated to that street and the organization has been able to surround them with everything from enrolling their children in school, scheduling doctor’s appointments, and taking families on fun field trips. These efforts to build safe communities for our Afghan neighbors is vitally important to their resettlement.
Travis Manion Foundation - Honoring Lives and Legacies
When Travis Manion Foundation volunteer Rebecca Shields learned of the 40 Afghan families still living in hotels in Philadelphia, PA waiting for housing, she got to work organizing a service project collecting and sorting gently used winter clothing for the families. This project was completed in honor of the lives and legacies of the 13 service members who lost their lives in Afghanistan this past August.
Recently, we attended a convening hosted by Hello Neighbor in Pittsburgh to share learnings with more than 50 nonprofits from across the country working to welcome refugees. At the event, we joined discussions about the challenges in providing necessary services to newly arrived refugees. Despite having limited capacity, these grassroots organizations have managed to mount an extraordinarily thoughtful and impressive effort involving a significant number of volunteers. One of the biggest challenges is a critical shortage of lawyers to help support Afghans. Newly arrived refugees only have 12 months from their day of arrival on U.S. soil to file for asylum. These organizations are also simultaneously preparing for an expected arrival of 100,000 Ukrainians in the next several months.
“This is an ongoing human crisis and the Foundation and our grantee partners remain committed to helping the thousands of families who are being forced to flee their home countries. Equity, trauma-informed practice and lived experience will continue to inform and guide these resettling efforts. But more than anything, we are guided by our shared humanity. We remain encouraged that support for displaced people among Americans is the highest it has been in decades,” says Marie Groark, Schultz Family Foundation program director, who attended the Hello Neighbor convening.
To find more about the organizations and becoming a volunteer click here.
