Imagine: You can no longer stay in your home community, where you were born and where you went to school, and where your parents were raised. Perhaps you had to flee in the middle of the night to escape the coming soldiers, or maybe you lived in a refugee camp that was dirty and crowded, and never really felt like home. Then, one day, they told you that you were being resettled in America. The only thing you knew was that America was a place of opportunity, it was where Obama was president, and it was a land of milk and honey and riches. Maybe you were ready to leave your home country, or maybe you weren’t, but it was time to go. You knew you were lucky.
Imagine: You have cleared all your paperwork and are headed to the U.S. You get on the first airplane you have ever seen and you don’t understand a word of what anyone is saying. You get off the plane and cram into an elevator. You follow signs and move anonymously with the crowd, clutching your white bag from the INS—a bag that contains pretty much all that you own. Everything else you have left behind, possibly even your family. People are moving so fast and everything is so shiny and bright. You don’t know really what to do. Then someone shouts at you, “Hey, number 17, come over here,” and you go. Welcome to America.
Imagine: You had a career in your home country—maybe you were once a banker or a teacher or ran your own small business before the violence spread. While everyday you are thankful to be alive, it is a challenging and humbling process to start over. You live in an apartment with four other people. Your English isn’t very good, and your talents and past experiences don’t translate into decent work in America. You learn very quickly that things are fast-paced and unforgiving when you have few friends or connections to help you along. You are safe but sort of lonely.
It’s a stretch, at best, to even imagine the miles traveled in a refugee’s shoes. By the time they have gotten to Colorado, they are automatically assigned to a voluntary agency, or volag, which is the primary case management agency responsible for helping them resettle in the U.S. During the initial resettlement period soon after a refugee has arrived in the States, volags offer a high level of programs and services designed to help them acclimatize; eight months after the arrival date, however, refugees become ineligible for many of these services, and the agencies must redirect their attention to newer arrivals. Thus, the service level for existing refugees begins to decline.
We know that eight months is too short a period for anyone to be truly adjusted and settled within a new language, society and culture—and especially for those who have left their homeland abruptly and perhaps not even on their own volition. In fact, statistics show that over 30 percent of newly resettled refugees are still struggling to meet basic needs (consistent food, shelter and economic security) after having lived in the U.S. for three years (Acculturation, Economics and Food Insecurity Among Refugees Resettled in the USA: A Case Study of West African Refugees, 2006).
To help bridge this gap, the Colorado African Organization’s BeFriender program works collaboratively with the volags to provide extended services, especially picking up after their initial eight-month period has concluded.
CAO’s BeFriender program provides individualized and on-call case management, helping refugees with anything from completing a housing application to going to court, to mediating parent-teacher conferences to assisting on hospital/doctor visits. For example, this year the BeFriender program is helping an 18-year-old female refugee, who was the victim of female genital mutilation, navigate her first pregnancy as a refugee in the U.S. The BeFriender program is taking her to her appointments, translating with physicians and nurses, and helping support her through the entire process.
Right now, CAO serves approximately 280 individual clients per year through the program but is looking to expand and recruit new volunteers, from both the mainstream and African communities. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Anab Keire or Linda Johnson at 303 953 7060 or at anabk@caoden.org or lindaj@caoden.org, respectively.
CAO’s BeFriender program is funded through Office of Refugee Resettlement and Colorado Refugee Services Program.
