[ad_1]
On a quiet little road along Rogers Lake in Old Lyme, a stone path leads to a porch with two wooden rocking chairs and a bright blue front door. In a few weeks, an Afghan family will cross that door and settle in their new home after fleeing the Taliban.
The house, purchased in 2017 through a partnership between three Old Lyme churches, has been used time and again to provide refuge for people fleeing war-torn towns, dangerous towns and homes decimated by natural disasters. Families from Syria, Congo, Puerto Rico and Iraq lived in the gray three-bedroom house, staying for free while they find work, start school, learn English and rebuild their lives .
“This house is a shelter from which they can try to start over their entire lives,” said Steve Jungkeit, senior minister of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, one of the churches that helped buy the house.
“The walls of this house give them shelter, but that’s only part of it,” he said. shelter. They all create an atmosphere of healing, support and encouragement, and it truly is the best kind of shelter we can offer. “
In October, Jungkeit hopes to welcome a new family into the house, possibly one from Afghanistan. In August, the Taliban seized most of Afghanistan, forcing many families to flee for fear of their regime.
“We’re ready to go,” Jungkeit said, gesturing around the comfortable house, furnished with sofas, dining tables, televisions, flowers, artwork and four beds. “The beds are made and ready, and it won’t be long before they are inhabited by a family, presumably refugees from Afghanistan. But we are ready to welcome anyone who needs it.
Refugees and other families who need to be resettled are guided to the Old Lyme home through the New Haven-based Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS, which oversees the resettlement of hundreds of refugees each. year. The organization hopes to help at least 300 Afghan refugees by the end of the year.
Typically, refugees are flown to military bases and then brought to the IRIS office in New Haven. The nonprofit then connects with partner organizations statewide to resettle those in need of housing.
The new London group has also prepared
Start Fresh is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization that works with IRIS to help resettle refugees and internally displaced people by helping them ‘make a fresh start’ in New London.
Vivan Samos of Gales Ferry has been volunteering for at least five years with Start Fresh and is Vice Chairman of its Board of Directors. She said the organization has welcomed six families: three from Syria, two from Sudan and one from Afghanistan, since its inception in 2016.
The 31 people from those families were moved to fully furnished apartments with cupboards stocked with groceries, greeted with a dinner of food from their culture, and greeted by a group of volunteers ready and willing to help enroll the children in the school. school, help adults find jobs and answer their questions.
Currently, Start Fresh is preparing to welcome at least two families who are expected to arrive from Afghanistan within the month.
Start Fresh has rented two houses in New London and is in the process of furnishing them to prepare them to welcome their new occupants. The rentals are only temporary, and after six months they will have to resettle the families again.
The organization has struggled to find affordable housing in the city lately, Samos said. She said they have faced a lack of availability and increased rental prices and are looking for help from the community to find housing they can afford for families in need. be reinstalled.
In August, just days after the fall of the Afghan capital to the Taliban and the cessation of civilian flights from the city, IRIS welcomed seven people to New Haven late at night. The family of 6 and a single man came to the United States on Special Immigration Visas, or SIVs, which bring Americans who work with the United States military to Afghanistan or Iraq and offer them, as well as to their immediate family, protection.
The seven refugees were all settled in their own apartments.
On the IRIS website, the organization posted a notice saying it is standing with Afghan families and is ready to welcome those who evacuate the country with just 24 hours’ notice.
In New London, Start Fresh said it normally has up to two weeks to prepare for a family’s arrival, but next month it could prepare for a family in half the time, or even more. as little as 48 hours. The organization hopes to help as many families as it can afford to help this year, but Samos said it faces new challenges.
In October, the group expects to receive families coming to the United States urgently after evacuating from Afghanistan. Due to the circumstances, families may not have access to benefits they would normally get, such as SNAP benefits to purchase food, cash assistance and long-term medical care, Samos said. And they may need legal help to apply for asylum.
“We have never settled families who arrive as humanitarian evacuees, so there are more strangers in this group than in any other group we have hosted so far,” Samos said. “It’s actually a huge leap of faith to even do this because we don’t know much about it. We knew how to resettle refugees. We’ve been doing it for years. But it’s a ball game. different and that’s going to take a lot of creativity. “
Samos said Start Fresh doesn’t know when the families will be arriving or how many people will be coming. Fortunately, he has around 130 volunteers he can call on in a crisis, Samos said, and a support system to build on in New London.
Samos said Start Fresh has a long list of community partners and has already had many local businesses to seize employment opportunities in fields such as hospitality and agriculture.
The Old Lyme group is also ready
Jungkeit said that at Old Lyme they would be ready to move a family “as soon as they get the call.”
“We are fully prepared to receive a family as soon as they arrive,” he said on Friday as he was at home with two volunteers setting up dehumidifiers and unpacking household items.
The operation, he said, is also run entirely by 60 volunteers, mostly from local churches, who are helping in any way they can.
The First Congregational Church purchased the house in response to the Syrian refugee crisis and manages the resettlement program in conjunction with IRIS and with the partnership of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church and Christ the King Catholic Church.
Jungkeit said the Old Lyme faith community has recognized the need to provide a safe space for families seeking refuge.
“We are called to exercise radical hospitality and to open the doors of our community to receive those who seek to build a better life,” he said. “We bought the house with the idea that we would resettle the refugees in perpetuity. We wanted to continue doing this for years to come and use this house as a kind of landing space for people to come and put their feet up under.
Since 2017, churches and volunteers have found ways to use the home to help families do just that.
Cookie Staves, a volunteer who has helped resettle refugees for years, said it was gratifying to see the families she welcomed to Old Lyme find careers, move into new homes and send their children home. university.
“You learn so much by watching the little things that give them joy that we take for granted,” she said. “They’re just thankful that they put their heads down at night and know they’re going to wake up in the morning.”
Jungkeit said he recalled welcoming a family used to a more urban setting at a temporary home in Old Lyme across from a cow pasture. When he apologized for the noise of the cows, he recalled that one of the refugees replied, “It’s good to hear cows. They are not bombs.
“This area may seem remote, secluded, even dull to us, but to them they see that there are no bombs falling from the sky,” Jungkeit said. “They come from these really war-torn areas and getting to a place where they are not threatened by violence is really a big deal.”
To help these families, Jungkeit said the church still accepts cash donations. Since many families leaving Afghanistan will not be allowed to work immediately and may not receive government assistance, the church estimates they will need double the funding they typically receive to support them. . Donations can be made through the church’s website, https://fccol.org/, or by check made payable to the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme with “refugees” in the notes.
Samos said Start Fresh is always on the lookout for volunteers, monetary donations to help with housing and other expenses, and is currently looking for donated beds with new mattresses for the homes they have rented. For more information or to register as a volunteer, visit startfreshct.org.
IRIS asks for help in the form of donations and volunteers.
Donations can be made at irisct.org and will go directly to offset the cost of purchasing essential items for refugees upon arrival. Director Chris George said in August that many refugees and evacuees arrive in the United States with little more than clothes on their backs.
The organization also requests collections of items such as backpacks, school supplies, winter coats and waterproof winter boots. Anyone with articles to donate can email [email protected].
[ad_2]
Source link