by Bryn Kirk I know I should not hold my breath but I can’t help it. The father in our Karenni refugee family started a new job last week! He completed a 40 hour week; 4 ten-hour days Monday through Thursday. So far so good! I think I can let my breath out. His job […]
Since being dismissed from his ever-so-brief temp-to-hire position, the husband/father in our refugee family has run out of options for income. He must pay $575 a month for his one bedroom apartment. He currently has $140.00 to his name. Our refugee resettlement funds are used up, the Matching Grant program is finished, and job prospects are thin. […]
I last wrote about the new job for the husband/father in our most recent refugee family. Unfortunately the job did not stick. The company that was hiring brought in a large number of people to begin employment at the same time. During the training day, our hopeful employee was permitted to complete the day, but […]
Our goal, when we go into a refugee resettlement project is to complete the project within 6 months. In order to consider the resettlement complete means that the family is self-sufficient, at least in the normal, day-to-day tasks, of life in our society. Usually there are areas of weakness that may need to be attended to […]
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 […]
Day 85 Each refugee resettlement effort writes its own story. This one started off as particularly difficult because we were helping two families simultaneously. Then, if you’ve read along, you remember that we had some issues moving the families into a house in a community 25 miles away from some of their family members who […]
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 […]
One of the things that refugees must face on their journey to self-sufficiency is that of understanding finances. In a short time they will have to handle housing, food, utilities, transportation, repayment of their refugee travel grant, and other expenses. In our current refugee resettlement project we took a step forward today with the establishment […]
Now that the first month is complete, I have moved away from daily updates. Our activities have slowed to a point where it is a stuggle to come up with something interesting to write about each day. Instead I’ll still jump in with useful lessons to pass along. This past week we’ve continued to dedicate time […]
