Tag: International Neighbors

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News

Helping hand: International Neighbors supports refugee families during the pandemic

Kari Miller and International Neighbors have been working to ease the transition for resettled refugees since 2015. PC: Zack Wajsgras

By Laura Drummond

Kari Miller was a second-grade teacher in Charlottesville when, one day, she saw a student fall on the playground and break his arm. After the injury, it soon became apparent that the child, a refugee, had incomplete paperwork, meaning a guardian could not be contacted to give the school the green light to administer pain medication. Miller sat with the child as he suffered for hours until family members could be reached and secure transportation to pick him up.

The experience inspired Miller to found International Neighbors, an organization dedicated to providing support to area refugee families, who, she says, are an under-resourced community whose members “are forced to suffer because they don’t have a network. It is so unfair—refugees have already endured so much.”

And as the pandemic has unfolded, the challenges of being a stranger in a foreign land have only become more pronounced.

Fewer than 1 percent of refugees are resettled worldwide, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Of those, about 250 refugees and Special Immigrant Visa holders make it to Charlottesville each year. By the time they arrive, they have experienced tragic circumstances, undergone rigorous vetting through the United States Refugee Resettlement Program, and traveled to a place unfamiliar in its language and landscape, customs and culture. They almost immediately find themselves in debt, owing the U.S. State Department and a resettlement agency the cost of their resettlement, an average of more than $1,000 per person, reports The New York Times.

In 2015, Miller, now executive director of International Neighbors, connected her injured student’s family with a local family to help navigate their new community. That gesture started the neighbor-to-neighbor support system that has become the foundation of IN. Five years later, “We currently have 58 family matches and a long list of people who want to be connected to a family,” Miller says.

The organization has expanded as other needs have come to light. With about 100 volunteers, IN now offers support to more than 300 refugee families—whether that means arranging doctor appointments or teaching them to sew with refurbished sewing machines. “We try to help our neighbors strive to thrive in five years,” Miller says.

As the pandemic has persisted, International Neighbors has escalated its efforts. “Refugees are 60 percent more likely to work in sectors of the economy impacted most by COVID-19,” reports the International Rescue Committee, citing research from the Center for Global Development and Refugees International.

“Financial restraints are always first and foremost,” Miller says, but “these are folks working hourly jobs who lost their livelihood. They are very concerned about being able to pay rent.” In response, IN created the Neighbor Needs Emergency Fund in March, which has so far raised more than $80,000 to assist with urgent financial necessities like eviction prevention and medical-related expenses.

Other needs are less obvious. “Every day I learn something more about how confusing it is to live in our community as a refugee,” Miller says. A simple task like laundry, for example, is a hardship for refugees. Lack of transportation means dependency on coin-operated machines where they live, spending an average of $8 per load and sharing facilities with as many as 200 tenants. And as if there wasn’t enough going on, there’s also a national coin shortage, which has exacerbated the difficulties of doing laundry.

In early August, International Neighbors introduced the Change for Change quarter drive, distributing collection cans to small businesses around Charlottesville, with donations going directly to refugee families in the IN network. Splendora’s Gelato was the first to collect donations. “The people who do the work for that program really do address needs outside of what I would have ever thought about,” says Splendora’s owner PK Ross.

Upon receiving $32 in quarters, which covers about four loads of laundry, a Rwandan refugee says, “This is a big help. I won’t have to walk a mile to get change, or begin washing and not have enough coins to finish.”

“The little things are a big deal for our neighbors. Life is hard in so many ways. Just making one little thing easier makes a big difference,” says IN Communications Director Jennifer MacAdam-Miller.

Another recent effort to make things easier is the Groceries on the Go program. Food insecurity is a persistent hardship for refugees that has worsened during the pandemic. Relying on public transportation and in-person shopping means facing greater risks of COVID-19 exposure.

So IN volunteers have been shopping for refugee families on the side. When community members do their grocery shopping, they can add culturally appropriate foods and other essentials to their orders and drop them off to refugee families. Genevieve Lyons, IN volunteer and program coordinator, says, “Grocery shopping for yourself can feel like such a daunting task. These are hard times for everybody, but these people are affected a lot more. Every time I’m going out and taking that risk, I should be helping somebody else.”

In addition to financial assistance, efforts to combat social isolation are of crucial importance during this time. While many people are now connecting virtually, most refugee families don’t have computers or internet access. IN received a number of laptop donations, but there is still a barrier of technological illiteracy. “You almost can’t participate in the world right now, and it’s very isolating,” MacAdam-Miller says.

As public school classes have moved online, the divide has worsened. To make education more equitable for refugee students, International Neighbors recently established Virtual Learning Centers to assist English language learning students with online learning. With help from donors, volunteers, and a grant from the National Parents Union, IN offers supervision and support to 18 K-4 students across three “learning pods.” The students are refugees who most recently arrived in the U.S. and those most in need of support online.

Volunteer Kristin Thomas Sancken, who has been influential in getting the Virtual Learning Centers up and running, says, “I don’t think people have any idea of how desperate the situation of online learning is for newly arrived refugees. The first day, none of the kids knew that computers had to be plugged into power. None of them knew how to connect to WiFi. Then, they were expected to log onto classes at very precise times, or else they are marked as absent.”

IN hopes to expand its services to more families and intends to keep the program running until public schools return to in-person instruction, but resources are limited. At the moment, IN is in need of volunteers to help at the Virtual Learning Centers, as well as people who can offer technical support to refugee families in their homes. In September, IN established the Access and Equity Fund, which is accepting donations to cover the cost of instruction, school supplies, child-sized face masks, forehead thermometers, craft and playground supplies, and passenger van transportation.   

Miller says, “If you feel like you can’t do anything, it’s not true. Because all these folks want is a lifeline. And they deserve that. They truly are the most amazing, resilient folks in Charlottesville.”

Categories
Living

Social fabric: Restored sewing machines are a lifeline for refugees

International Neighbors volunteer Deborah Jackson has delivered sewing machines to dozens of area refugees who use them to make clothing and household goods for their families and others. Photo: Eze Amos

This is a story about sewing machines and a woman who repairs and gives them to Charlottesville’s refugees. That might sound like a paltry gift. But to a refugee who sold her clothes in her home country to help pay for her family’s journey to escape violence, institutionalized misogyny, and possibly death, a sewing machine is a powerful tool. It is a source of personal pride, an instrument of creativity and independence, and a means to stitch back together a war-torn life.

Najeeba Popal uses the sewing machine she got through International Neighbors to make dresses for her daughters. She arrived here from Afghanistan five years ago, and now her work as a seamstress also provides a source of income. Photo: Eze Amos

The sewing machine lady is Deborah Jackson. On a sunny afternoon in late November, she sits on the living room couch in her Belmont home, cradling a squirming baby, Taraawat. Next to them is the child’s mother, Najeeba Popal. Popal, 32, arrived in the United States five years ago, on a special immigrant visa, or SIV, for helping the U.S. military. She and her daughter have the same round face, dark hair, and chestnut-colored eyes—but now Popal’s are clouded with tears.

She choked up while telling the story of saying goodbye to her family in Herat, her hometown in western Afghanistan. Popal had lived almost her whole life there, graduating from the local university and working for four years before meeting her future husband and moving to Kabul, where they had their first child. But nearly all of her friends and family still live in Herat. It’s where her mother, a seamstress, taught her to sew. But Popal, fearing her work for the U.S. would be discovered, had no choice but to leave—on a plane the next morning, she told her family.

“I was thinking about my child,” she says, dabbing away tears. “She was newborn. I thought, What if something happens to me—if she were not to have a mom? That would make her life horrible.”

Today, that child and her sister, the one Popal was pregnant with when the family fled Afghanistan, both attend Clark Elementary School. “They love it,” Popal says. Her husband has a full-time job, and Popal takes care of Taraawat and works at home. Like her mom, she is a seamstress.

It’s difficult to convey the monumental contrast between life in Kabul, where terrorist bombings dismembered people and destroyed families, and Charlottesville, where Popal and her family are not only intact but have a growing network of friends. Popal and Jackson are particularly close. They met three years ago through International Neighbors, a local nonprofit that supports refugees. When Jackson discovered Popal knew how to sew, she gave her a sewing machine that had been donated to IN.

“My husband and I delivered two machines yesterday,” Jackson says, handing off Taraawat to Popal. “I always drop them off with bobbins, extra needles, fabric, and things like zippers and buttons.”

Jackson gave her first machine to a refugee three years ago, when another IN volunteer told Jackson that a grandmother had asked for one. The nonprofit had one, but it was broken, so Jackson—who had learned to sew and maintain sewing machines as an 11-year-old—fixed and delivered it. “She was so happy,” Jackson says. “I’ll never forget the look on her face!”

Since then, Jackson has handed out 48 machines and has 15 more at her home, awaiting repair. In the early days of the program, Jackson used nextdoor.com to request donations of machines and fabric. The fabric flooded in. Machines were left on her porch. And now, what started as a one-off has become a meaningful service, enabling refugee women (and a couple of men, notably, a tailor from Congo) to provide clothing and household goods (curtains, furniture cushions, sheets, and more) to their families and other refugees. Some people, like Popal and the tailor, sew as a source of income, finding clientele by word of mouth and through IN, which plans to give sewing lessons at its Fifeville headquarters in January.

Jackson considers the success of her efforts a blessing, but she can’t keep up with the demand, and she hopes others will step up to help. It wouldn’t require a big time commitment, and Jackson can attest to how gratifying it is to help refugees and their families. The things that Popal and others sew are staples of life. But the network that has formed and the friendships made are just as important. “People don’t have family when they come here,” she says. “They feel sad and lonely.”

In time, those feelings diminish, if only a stitch at a time.

Editor’s note: The print version of this story, published on December 18, notes that Jackson had distributed 38 machines to date. After the newspaper had gone to press, she recounted—and came up with 48.

Categories
News

No room to grow: In a tight real estate market, a family of seven makes do with 860 square feet

Sheria and Sylvan Kassondwa in the living room of their Fifeville home, with (from left) Syvlie, 12; Cherubine, 9; Cecile, 7; Charline, 3; and Seloe, 1. Photo: Eze Amos

Sylvan and Sheria Kassondwa’s 860-square foot, three-bedroom apartment would be fine, they say, if they had one or two kids.

As it happens, they have five.

“In my country, time is not money like here, you can spend more time with your family,” says Sylvan, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “And then here you find that you spend more time with work. So when you have more kids, you find that you have a big problem here.”

He laughs—what can one do? On a rainy afternoon in early March, his children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, pop in and out of the tiny living room to greet their guest, then disappear upstairs. They are charming and well-behaved, but their parents lament how cramped they are at home.

“The kids, they don’t have space,” Sheria says. “They have nowhere to keep their shoes, it’s a mess.” She indicates an overflowing shoe rack on the stair landing and waves her hands dismissively. “This does not really look like a place where you can breathe, feel fresh air.”

When the Kassondwas moved to this apartment in Fifeville, in November of 2017, they’d hoped it would be a step up.

Sylvan and Sheria had fled their home in the Congo more than a decade earlier, seeking refuge from the war and violence there. They landed in Uganda and applied for refugee status in the United States. It took 12 years.

“We were struggling to live,” says Sheria. “But we had this hope, that one day we would be fine.”

They were thrilled to finally get to the United States, and the family (by then, the Kassondwas had four kids) came to Charlottesville in September of 2016. The International Rescue Committee helped them settle into an apartment off Hydraulic Road, and paid their rent for the first three months while they found work.

“Then, thank God, we met International Neighbors,” says Sheria.

Founded by local educator Kari Miller, International Neighbors helps support refugee families once the IRC is no longer involved in their cases. The organization connects new arrivals to local “family friends” and helps them navigate the complexities of American life, from school forms to local events.

“She helped us a lot,” Sheria says, “but she can only do so much.” The two-bedroom apartment was a tight fit for their family of six, with another baby on the way. So the couple took it upon themselves to try to find a bigger place, searching apartment listings online.

With their limited budget (Sylvan was working as a tailor, while Sheria cleaned houses and took classes to improve her English), there were few affordable options.

Eventually, they found a three-bedroom for $830 a month, only $100 a month more than their two-bedroom, in a complex aimed at low-income renters called Greenstone on 5th.

“It’s cheap for the area, that’s why we are here,” Sylvan says. 

They applied online, but after moving in, they realized how small each of the rooms was (the bedrooms fit little more than a bed and a dresser, with only a foot or two of space in between), and that there was no washing machine in the apartment.

Doing laundry in the complex costs $3.75 per load, Sheria says, and, “I have this many kids. It’s going to be five loads.”

As the children get older, having only one bathroom for all seven of them is also a problem, but apartments with two bathrooms and washing machines cost $1,200 a month, Sylvan says—out of reach for now.

The apartment has a roach problem, and maintenance is slow to respond to calls, Sylvan adds. But his number-one concern is the neighbors. He says people are often hanging around the complex smoking marijuana.

“This day, it’s good,” Sylvan says with a smile, indicating the gloomy weather outside the window.

“Cause it’s cold outside, everybody’s doing it in the house,” his wife explains. In summer, they say, it’s terrible.

“It’s not a good environment for my kids,” Sheria says. “But we don’t have a choice for now.”

She’d prefer to rent a duplex, but she doesn’t think it’s possible. “In Charlottesville, it’s very expensive,” she says. “We’d never afford that.”

“Every family here is squeezed,” Sylvan adds.

After taking English classes, Sheria trained to become a certified nursing assistant, and now works full-time at UVA. Sylvan hopes that, before his children become teenagers, they’ll be able to afford another place.

“I’m trying to plan, but I don’t know if I can afford to move,” he says. “Maybe next year, or two years.” He’s thinking about getting a second job. “But also, when you have a second job, you have little time with your kids,” he notes.

Still, the couple does not want to complain too much—their home is an improvement over what they left behind in Africa, and Sylvan takes a philosophical view. “If you can’t afford the house that is fitting your family, you need to [be] content with the one you have,” he says.

His wife, who would also prefer a roomier kitchen, interjects: “But you are not happy about it.”

 

Categories
Arts

The Charlottesville Women’s Choir sings for all

The Charlottesville Women’s Choir presents new songs about justice, and one about food fads called “Dinner,” on Sunday at The Haven. Donations at the door will benefit International Neighbors Charlottesville. Photo by Martyn Kyle

In the wake of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Amanda Korman knew what she needed to do. Sing.

At a local vigil, Korman sang songs of solidarity, mourning and protest alongside fellow members of the Charlottesville Women’s Choir “to say we do not want this violence in our country. We want to stand up for the rights of all people to be safe to gather together,” she says.

“We were able to add music to the chorus of everyone in Charlottesville who gathered to speak up in solidarity with the Florida community and the LGBTQ and Latino communities across the country that were in pain,” says Korman.

Charlottesville Women’s Choir
The Haven
June 3

Founded in 1984 with the mission of “singing for peace and justice,” the Charlottesville Women’s Choir is a local force for good. The self-directed, volunteer-based choir acts as an avenue for women from all walks of life to gather, giving voice and energy to the promotion of social justice through music.

“Women’s choirs in particular have a very rich history of being involved with social change,” Korman says. “I think it was in the ’60s and ’70s that women’s choirs became a space for making social change with a particular blend of feminism, civil rights and gay rights. Since then, we’re continually expanding the umbrella to make sure we’re thinking of justice for all.

In addition to being part of this tradition, CWC supports activism through song choice. By choosing songs with poignant lyrics that are easy for groups to learn, disparate voices come together and energize people for difficult fights.

Over the last 34 years, the choir has grown from four to 40 members. Singers, from teenagers to retirees, come from all over Charlottesville and the surrounding communities, and many members have been in the choir since the ’80s and ’90s.

Korman, who works at the Women’s Initiative, joined CWC because she loves to sing in groups. “Our choir is about bringing the gift of music to the community, but it’s also a very meaningful social group for all the members,” she says. “We provide a lot of support and friendship to one another.”

That sense of community-within-the-community is partly intentional. Led by music director Karen Beiber, CWC operates by consensus. The group encourages every member to speak up about which events and songs the choir performs. Past events and venues include the International Day of Peace, Sojourners United Church of Christ and the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

Every spring, CWC performs a benefit concert for local organizations. Past recipients have been the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build and Shelter for Help in Emergency. Keeping with tradition, this year’s performance will benefit International Neighbors Charlottesville, an all-volunteer organization that helps refugees settle in the community.

This year’s concert, held on a Sunday afternoon, is meant to be a space for adults and children alike to have fun, let loose and sing along while feeling solidarity within the community.

“We’re living in very trying times where more people in our own country don’t feel safe, where women’s rights, immigrants’ rights and civil rights are being questioned anew,” Korman says. “A lot of the songs that we sing [in this concert] speak to the need, to the importance of equal rights for everyone, particularly because of the time that we’re living in and the news cycle that we’re experiencing every day.”

One song in particular stands out. “Signs,” written by Ruth Huber, pays homage to the power of women’s voices as a collective. With lyrics inspired by messages from signs at the 2017 Women’s March, the song talks about the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and protecting and representing the rights of immigrants, Native Americans and First Peoples, and lesbian, gay and trans people.

“This song tries to be really expansive while honoring the particular power of a women- led effort,” Korman says. “It names communities whose rights are being threatened and who, when we come together in solidarity, have so much power.”

Even the music hints at feminine power. “I am a soprano one which is the highest of all of the voices. We’re the stratospheric singers,” Korman says. “In this song, we sing a very high A note and, to me, being able to sing this high A represents being able to reach beyond what you think is possible, to hit notes that maybe only a woman could hit.” Some men could hit this note as well, but you take my point.”

In the end, Korman says, her hope for the concert is the same as that of the CWC: galvanizing people to take action in the community. “My hope is that you come away energized and ready to make positive change in Charlottesville.”