A Personal Take on the Refugee Crisis, Part 3

The third and last group we visited with was Friends of Refugees which is a community organization with the mission of Helping Refugees experience an abundant life in flourishing community and from what we were able to see, they are making an impact in Clarkston!

Located in a building annexed to the Clarkston International Bible Church, Friends of Refugees started out in 1995 as a food and clothing ministry.  In 2008 they added an internet cafe to assist refugees with job training, skills and preparation and have since expanded to other community services.  As Brian Bollinger, the executive director, states, Friends of Refugees exists to empower refugees through opportunities that provide for their well-being, education, and employment.

The internet cafe is a great example.  As I mentioned in a previous post, World Relief is the first point of contact for refugees when they arrive and among their responsibilities is funding a job for a member of the family.  “But,” Brian tells me, “World Relief focuses on ‘survival’ jobs not ‘living wage’ jobs.”  Often refugees don’t possess the necessary skills to find opportunities, prepare resumes and interview for positions.

The Friends of Refugees internet cafe focuses on three areas: technology, training and networking.  Staff and volunteers assist 40 to 50 refugees a week with access to the internet, skill building, and help with searching.  In addition, Friends of Refugees has developed connections with local Atlanta companies to advertise job openings.

One of the more exciting efforts Brian tells of is the business accelerator effort working with the entrepreneurial community to connect refugees with local entrepreneurs and business owners to foster relationships, business development and employment opportunities.  To date, Friends of Refugees has seen 15 new small businesses launched!  It’s important to keep in mind, especially in this time of media-fueled misinformation about refugees, that many of them were professional people with jobs and businesses in their own countries before war or persecution caused them to flee for their lives.  In my own conversations with people about the refugee crisis, people’s perceptions are across the board and it’s easy to mentally confuse refugees with our own illegal alien problems in the U.S., and all its associated issues.  They are altogether different things.

The church in America has an enormous amount of “social capital” available to invest in helping refugees build networks and social connections.  God calls us to use all of the currencies of life for the benefit of building His kingdom.  These are the currencies of labor, influence, finances and expertise and they are divided out among the body of Christ in order that that each of us may invest them for God’s glory.  Through the marshalling of these resources, the message of the gospel is demonstrated not only in word but in deed as refugees find community, relationship and are enabled to become productive members of the new world in which they find themselves.

Are we, Christians who are living typical American lives, not also strangers and sojourners in a land that it not our own, and benefiting from the blessings of God that we did not deserve.  And are we not called to be that same blessing to the stranger, the orphan and the widow?

Friends of Refugees works with volunteers and organizations of all types, secular and faith based.  They are the conduit for refugee resettlement agencies, global organizations, local schools, and a variety of volunteer organizations, channelling numerous different services through its community programs such as the internet cafe.  For Christians with a heart to serve, they provide an incredible scaffolding for the Church to deploy this social capital.

The internet cafe is just one of the services Friends of Refugees provides.  Other programs include:

• Food & Clothing
• After School Tutoring
• Summer Youth Camp
• Embrace, a program for expecting mothers to receive pre- and post-natal care education
• Mommy & Me Family Literacy Program
• Adult ESL Classes
• The Refugee Sewing Society
• Community Garden

To highlight a couple of these programs, we had a tour of the Mommy & Me literacy facility.  Refugees are required to attend ESL class 4 days a week which can be a problem, particularly for mothers who don’t have child care.  Through the Mommy & Me program, child care is provided in a loving structured environment that is both close to the mother and similar to a school which helps prepare children for their transition into school.

The Refugee Sewing Society is a place where women can develop relationships, build skills and even create and sell the clothes and accessories they create such as the one-of-a-kind Nomi dolls.

We finished up our visit with Friends of Refugees by touring the Jolly Avenue Community Garden where refugee families can rent a plot of land and grow their own food.  Again, Brian tells us that even though these refugees may have lost everything in their home countries and come to a new place and language and customs, no one can take a thousand years of agricultural heritage away from them.  The community garden not only provides a place of sustenance through food and work, but also a community gathering place where relationships are built and stories are shared.

Gardens are magical places to me, stirring my soul in a way I can’t explain, and this place of new life and growth (even though our visit was in the dead of winter!) provided a fitting end to this day of learning how the refugees of Clarkston are rebuilding their lives in America.

In case you missed the other posts, you can click here to read about Global Frontier Missions and World Relief.

Check out this infographic on refugees from World Relief.