I spent my Friday at Franklin & Marshall college, for a conference about refugee resettlement in Lancaster. We had a fairly large group of people who are serving refugees in a variety of ways, and we came together to learn how we can better serve and assist the people that we work with.
I loved the wide variety of people we had - Nepali people, a Iraqi couple, a speaker from Burma, a family from the Congo; teachers like myself who work with non-English speakers, folks who help them find homes in the United States, people in the health field who assist refugees in the confusing maze of healthcare.
What really inspired me was getting to share ideas, challenges and thoughts with so many other volunteers who are working with refugees also. In the last session, we broke into groups of seven, and discussed our city: how are we helping refugees? How are we failing? Are there some things we could do better? Strengths? Weaknesses?
We came together again, and the staff at F&M put all the ideas into a powerpoint presentation. I was really inspired by the ideas and challenges! Here's a few of our thoughts:
- In Lancaster city alone, we have so many resources that could be utilized. There's many volunteers and several organizations dealing with refugee resettlement, and yet as we were interacting at the conference, we were meeting each other for the first time! (On a personal level, I met a teacher that is working with the same refugee family that I'm tutoring. Neither of us were aware of each other. Now that we've met, we can partner together, share ideas. ) If those of us who are working with refugees were aware of each other, we could better direct our people to the volunteers who would be able to help them. I'm a teacher; I can't help Didi with his taxes. But if I knew someone who could, I could direct him to that person.
- What about a community center, where we would bring together the various specialties? We don't know where the community services are! If we had a center to direct the refugees to - whether the need be teaching, ESL, driving help, healthcare, etc. - there wouldn't be as many gaps and unfulfilled needs.
-Another thing that we talked about was the language problem. We need to be very sensitive and willing to speak slowly, listen carefully, and not to be afraid to repeat to make sure we got the point across. Possibly something we said could be misunderstood, or mean a totally different thing to our non-English friends.
It was a exciting conference. I made numerous international friends from around the globe, who are now living in my city. I learned more about how to help my refugee friends. I can hardly wait to head into Lancaster city again this week - but wait, this time I have two families to visit, not just one! :)
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