World Refugee Day 2021
Learn of ways to support refugees in your community through three organizations who lead the way in ensuring that newly resettled refugees feel welcome.
Refugees face insurmountable challenges, having been displaced from their homes and seeking a better life for themselves and their families in other countries. Having to flee your home in itself presents obstacles and difficult choices. However, many of the challenges that arise during displacement are due to restrictive governments and policies, which make refugees’ lives even more challenging.. Refugees face the brunt of many of today’s harshest realities. Refugees are the target of exclusionist migration policies, including those based on false pretenses of protecting global health. They face the realities of climate change to the most extreme.They are often separated from their loved ones while fleeing. They sacrifice their education to seek safety, and more often than not, their displacement lasts decades. Still, refugees show up as members of their new community. The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted refugees yet many refugees have been at the frontline of the pandemic providing essential services during a global emergency.
Given the challenges refugees who resettle face, it is imperative that we show up for refugees in our communities, tirelessly and with the same commitment and courage that refugees have shown, for example, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This World Refugee Day, Refugee Pathways highlights the impact that welcoming host communities can have on ensuring the safety, security and overall well-being of resettled refugees.
There are various valuable ways to welcome refugees as cherished members of our communities. Community sponsorships enable refugees to relocate to their host country due to the generosity of the residents within the host community. See if it is possible to sponsor a refugee family where you live. Academic scholarships enable refugee students and scholars to relocate to another country to pursue their education. See if your local university has scholarships specifically for refugee or displaced students. If there already is a scholarship, advocate for more. If not, advocate and organize for one to be created. Family reunification programs and humanitarian visas offer alternative resettlement avenues for displaced people. Does your country have family reunification programs for refugees or humanitarian visas? Write your representatives!
If you want to have a sustainable impact on supporting refugees, join the work to create these welcoming spaces. On World Refugee Day, we want to spotlight three organizations that do just this: Elena’s Light, Hello Neighbor, and The Refugee Center.
Elena’s Light’s mission is to build brighter futures for refugee women through a community that respects and celebrates diversity and provides equity opportunities for all members of the New Haven, Connecticut community. Their work primarily provides culturally competent and accessible English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, health education services, education on the American healthcare system, preparation for the driver’s license examination, and cross-cultural relationship building. This training enables refugees to access the services and care they need while resettling within a new community. Elena’s Light embraces compassion and diversity. A quote from one ESL tutor at Elena’s Light captures how meaningful the programming is for building supportive communities:
“Elena’s Light emphasizes empowering refugee women through literacy and health education. Learning English is just one of the many steps taken towards integration following resettlement in the United States. As an ESL tutor, I like to think of myself as a stepping stone to bolster our clients’ self-expression. For example, the woman I am studying with this summer just came to the states less than two months ago. In our second class, she showed me that she printed out the pictures I had sent of the whiteboard so that she could practice the alphabet more easily. I am not sure why I had teared up, but seeing her hold up my handwriting with a smile meant a lot; it reminded me that even though I approached this opportunity as a teacher, I am learning the meaning of bravery and determination through her.”
— ESL tutor at Elena’s Light
Hello Neighbor is a Pittsburgh-based organization working to improve the lives of recently resettled refugee and immigrant families by matching them with dedicated neighbors to guide and support them in their new lives. This embrace of diversity in the community provokes a welcoming, inclusive, and vibrant vision of what all of our neighborhoods could be when everyone is valued for who they are and empowered to live their lives with dignity and respect. Hello Neighbor’s values ensure that their work maintains a refugee-first mindset, cross-cultural sensitivity, dignified storytelling, and cultivates community. The Founder & CEO of Hello Neighbor shared a statement on the impact that the COVID-19 health pandemic has posed on refugees and how community support is more essential now than ever before:
“Hello Neighbor has been hard at work over the last year addressing the challenges and needs of our newest neighbors here in Pittsburgh. While COVID-19 presented unbelievable obstacles around the world, our community still managed to maintain and complete our active mentorship cohort. We have continued to distribute direct emergency cash assistance to our families through the new Refugee Assistance Fund, broadened our support of our families by introducing our Study Buddy and Smart Start programs, tripled the size of our national Hello Neighbor Network and maintained to connect and grow with refugee and immigrant families in our city. We are so proud to be here during these difficult times, and we are not going anywhere.”
— Sloane Davidson, Founder & CEO of Hello Neighbor
The Refugee Centre is a Montreal-based organization that provides a sustainable structure of integration for refugees and immigrants in Canada. The structure of the centre is based on a multi-faceted approach including education as well as, social, economic, legal and mental health.The Refugee Centre provides a sustainable and holistic structure of integration for newcomers to Canada through its vast array of services, including orientation, language classes, legal aid, academic aid, employment, and wellness support.
The Refugee Centre shared a statement on their community-led vision:
“We are a group of students and professionals who have worked together to build an organization imploring youth to work with the community to help strengthen the refugee and immigrant population through unity and integration.Founded in December 2015, we embarked on a journey to re-establish how nonprofits work, support and strengthen the communities they are involved with.”
— The Refugee Centre
This mission of unity and integration guides the Refugee Centre as they work closely with local and international organizations to promote the livelihoods of refugees in Canada, influence policy on refugee-related issues, and encourage inclusion of refugees through employment and education. In turn, the Refugee Centre has created jobs for refugees and immigrants, empowered them with information to access existing services, and expanded services through the many avenues previously mentioned. The community approach enables social, economic, and educational integration in order to improve the livelihoods and wellbeing of their refugee’ neighbors.
While these organizations are phenomenal, they are, thankfully, not alone in their important work with refugee and host communities. There are most likely organizations and various networks of community supporting refugees in tangible ways within your community and neighborhood already. Your task this World Refugee Day is to find them. We urge you to take action to support the inclusion and wellbeing of refugees who live right at your doorstep by partnering with organizations within your community to ensure justice for refugees.
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Emily Ervin for Refugee Pathways
