Move #4… Every resettlement brings about different issues. Each becomes its own story. Each varies somehow in its outcome. Our current resettlement case is still underway. We’re more than 3 months in at this point and we’ve reached an interesting milestone… 4 moves. That is we’ve moved the family, or parts of the family, into […]
How much volunteer effort is needed to resettle a refugee family? As a general rule plan on about 250 hours of volunteer time from the moment the family arrives at the local airport, to the completion of the first month. The second month is typically 1/2 or maybe only 1/3 the original effort. Actual numbers […]
Day 20 One of our co-chairs and her husband went to the family’s house twice today. First she returned some bedding that she had taken home to wash, and she picked up more blankets to launder later. Yesterday we believed that the wash machine in the house did not work. Today the consensus is that […]
Day 19 I really enjoy move-in day. Actually this is one of my favorite parts of the entire refugee resettlement process. Picking up at the airport is my other favorite time. To me these are the big transitional moments. So, move-in day… We arrived at the temporary housing (their relative’s apartment) at about 9:20 this morning. […]
Day 18 The big news today is that we were finally able to get an intake appointment for food and medical assistance! This will happen next week in a 4 hour-long meeting. For an average American family going through this process it is expected to be a 2.5 hour meeting. Throw in an interpreter and […]
Day 16 This is the first chance we’ve had to get the resettlement team back together since the family arrived just over two weeks ago. Even so, we had only a total of 6 people available for the meeting. We’d usually hope for more, but things are moving forward pretty good, so a small core […]
