With special thanks to Kyong Hee Cho and her wonderful piano students for their generous donation, to Fairfield Grace UMC and our additional fundraising activities and donations from other churches, we have exceeded our goal of $10,000 to sponsor a refugee family.
At the beginning of March, we gave the green light to IRIS to sign us up to receive a family. At this point, due to Federal government restrictions, it will most likely be either a family from Africa, or a family with a member who has worked with the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
We are still looking for people who would like to help with the following ongoing needs:
1) Transportation – We still need volunteers. There is a driver application for anyone who will be helping with transportation. Please let me know if you can help with driving the family to appointments, and we will get you a copy of the application.
2) Employment – We still need help identifying employment opportunities and contacts. If you have some ideas, please share, so we can continue to build a list of options!
3) Translators – If you know of anyone who speaks Pashto & Dari/Farsi (for Afghan families) or Swahili/ Kinyarwanda/Bembe (for Congolese families), please let us know.
4) English Tutoring – We have basic materials for teaching ESL and are looking to have volunteers who could tutor for one hour at a time, once or more per week, for adults and/or children. We’re putting together a tentative schedule of people’s availability for mornings and/or afternoons, Mon-Fri or even on the weekend.
5) Household Goods – We have a storage facility that is getting full (this is a good problem to have!), but additional storage can be made available if necessary. Many of the things that will be needed are contingent upon the make-up of the family, and these things won’t have to be stored, but can be signed up for ahead of time so we know we are covered. Here is the link: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/904084da8ad22a20-furniture.
6) Clothing for Family Members – In particular, we will need help in supplying clothing for the family members. Things like underwear and socks will need to be purchased new; outer clothing and shoes can be purchased from Goodwill or donated by church families. We won’t know what we need until we are assigned a family. But if you would like to volunteer in advance to supply clothing for a family member when the time comes, this would be very very helpful!
Please contact Kristina Joukhadar [kjoukhad@optonline.net; or 203-255-4814] if you would like to help with any of the above needs for our upcoming refugee family! Many thanks to you all!