Posts Tagged ‘Durham’
These Triangle agencies will resettle nearly half of the Afghan refugees coming to NC
DURHAM â Grocery gift cards, free legal help, winter clothing … and the list of needs keeps growing for a now estimated 500 Afghan refugees that one Durham refugee agency will be resettling in the next year.
Kokou Nayo, refugee community organizer for Church World Service Durham, says among the most important things people looking to help can contribute are financial donations and temporary housing.
Since the last week of July, the organization has helped 14 Afghan refugees, including a family of eight.
In its monthly newsletter, World Relief Durham, another agency, said it expects to resettle 380 refugees in the next year, with at least 80 of them from Afghanistan. …
Read the full article by Laura Brache at the News & Observer here.
World Relief Durham Afghan Refugee Response Update
Hear from World Relief Durham’s Director Adam Clark about our response to the Afghan refugee situation and what we’re expecting over the next few months. We are so encouraged by the outpouring of support and generosity from our community, which will enable World Relief Durham to serve and help resettle refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, the DRC, and other countries.
Emma’s Story
Photo: Emma shares a smile with former World Relief Durham Immigration Legal Services Manager, Kjerstin Lewis, moments after receiving her green card.
Emma is a mother of four, a wife, a homeowner, a new business owner, and a resident of Durham. She is also one of this countryâs new lawful permanent residents (green card holders). Emma came to the U.S. over 20 years ago to seek safety after experiencing violence in her hometown. She did not want to leave her country and her family, but she felt there was no other option for a future but to leave. Â
Emma has made an impact on the community since coming to the U.S. After arriving in Durham, she met her husband, and they married and started their family. Throughout the years, Emma taught her children to give to others, because âyou never know what someone else is going through.â Leading by example, she welcomes her childrenâs friends into her home as a safe space to stay, eat, play, and more. Emma calls them âher babiesâ and cares for them with love and affection. Similarly, several of them view Emma as their own mother, and call her and her husband, âMom and Dad.â Even as they grow older, they still frequently visit Emma and spend holidays and weekends with her and her family. While most of her family still lives in and around Durham, one of her sons is deployed abroad as part of the U.S. Army.
With the approval of her work authorization in the past year, Emma became a local small business owner. She and her husband have worked for years insulating basements and doing other construction projects as contract workers. After her work permit was approved and she received her social security number, Emma and her husband started their own home construction business and now hire contract workers for her company.
While preparing her green card application, Emma shared that as soon as she was granted her green card, she wanted to return to her home country in a van filled with clothes, shoes, and other commodities for her family living there. She remembers being hungry, not having a bed, and not having a good life before coming to the U.S. and wants to give to her family back home. Even though the pandemic delayed her trip, once it is safe to travel, she still plans to drive to visit her family back home and see them for the first time since she left, over 20 years ago.
Now, as she reflects upon her immigration process after receiving her green card, Emma shares, âI am very pleased and I give many thanks for the help I received. All you can do is work as God intended and if you behave very well, God always blesses you.â
“Letter From a Refugee” film released
Letter From A Refugee by Sachi Dely from VerveFilms on Vimeo.
Film Synopsis & credits
Unfortunate circumstances in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 forced many people to leave their beloved country. Sachi Dely, an artist based out of Greensboro, NC, experienced something similar two decades ago in Vietnam. Through this visual poem, Sachi renders advice to new refugees to rekindle hope and faith.
A Film by Aby Rao https://www.vervefilms.com
Music by Kai Engel – Caeli//Soli
About Sachi Dely
Sachi, who currently resides in Greensboro, North Carolina, is an indigenous Asian-American artist born in Dak Mil Province in Southern Vietnam. At the age of two, her family fled Vietnam due to religious persecution and other human rights violations against indigenous people. Her family lived in two separate refugee camps in Cambodia before immigrating to the United States of America as refugees in 2002.
Sachi’s art site: https://www.chiartstudio.com/
âDurham is ready.â City and county officials publicly welcome Afghan refugees
DURHAM
Omid Ahmadzai fled his home in Afghanistan in 2015. He spoke outside Durham City Hall on Monday for those still there.
Ahmadzai resettled in Durham with the help of Church World Service. He spoke alongside elected leaders and refugee workers at a press conference where officials publicly announced their support for Afghan refugees.
âTheir life is at high risk right now,â Ahmadzai said of fellow Afghans who worked for the American government and military yet remain stuck in Afghanistan with the Taliban in control of the country. …
Read full article by Laura Brache at the Herald Sun here.
Durham to welcome Afghan refugees fleeing turmoil of Taliban takeover in Afghanistan
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — Durham will open its arms and welcome Afghan refugees to the city.
Mayor Steve Schewel and other local leaders held a news conference Monday morning to officially state that Afghan refugees were welcome in Durham and would be loved as soon as they arrived.
The refugees are fleeing their home country as the Taliban takes over the county after the collapse of the Afghan government amid the withdrawal of US troops.
ABC11 spoke with an Afghan refugee in Durham who emigrated here a few years ago. He said his 20-year-old cousin died last week during the suicide bomb attack at Kabul Airport, which also killed 13 US service members. …
Read the full article by Tim Pulliam and Ana Rivera at abc11 here.
Durham Will Welcome Refugees from Afghanistan for Resettlement
Durham extended its melody of providing solace to the stranger this week as County Commissioners Wendy Jacobs and Nida Allam announced that the Bull City is one of several cities across the country that will soon receive an unspecified number of Afghan refugees.
âIt is my understanding that we could receive up to 90 refugees in September,â Jacobs told the INDY on Wednesday. âThis is a lot considering that we were only receiving a few hundred per year, total [from all over the world] in Durham in the past, typically.â
Several non-profits, including Church World Service, Lutheran Services Carolinas, and World Relief Durham have stepped up to provide support services that will include housing and translation, Jacobs said on Monday during the Board of Commissionersâ regularly scheduled meeting. …
Read full article by Thomasi McDonald at the Indy Week here.
‘Nobody wants to live in that situation’: Local Afghan refugee watches news coverage of home country
“There are explosions. Explosives in schools, mosques; nobody wants to live in that situation.”
DURHAM
Milad Ghaznavi, 18, was reunited with his family here in Durham in January of this year. A student enrolled in World Relief Durham’s Refugee and Immigrant Youth Services (RIYS), he was interviewed by ABC11 to share his perspective on what is happening in Afghanistan and how it impacts families like his, here in Durham.
Watch Milad’s interview on ABC11 HERE
Learn about how to help our Afghan allies with World Relief Durham HERE.
Resettlement agencies gear up as Afghan refugees arrive in NC. Hereâs how you can help.
DURHAM
It was a busy afternoon earlier this month as new workers moved in and employees carried boxes and paperwork from one room to another of the two-story John OâDaniel Exchange building on the edge of East Durham.
World Relief Durham, a local branch of the national, faith-based, refugee resettlement agency, was expanding in an unprecedented way.
After major cuts in federal funding for refugee agencies during the Trump administration, President Joe Biden approved $100 million in emergency aid for Afghan refugees July 24, just as the last U.S. troops trickled out of Afghanistan.
Adam Clark, the director of World Relief Durham, said the closest thing to what resettlement agencies like his are experiencing happened in the late 1970s after the Vietnam War.
âThis isnât a typical situation for refugee resettlement evacuation,â Clark said. âSudden flights coming into military bases is not typically how the process works.â
See the full story in The News&Observer here.
Learn how you can Help Our Afghan Allies with World Relief HERE.
âEvery single Afghan just lost their soulâ: NC families fear for safety of loved ones still in Afghanistan
WAKE FOREST N.C. (WNCN) â Right now, there are about 1,200 Afghan refugees already in the United States, but as many as 3,500 could arrive in the coming weeks with some to the Triangle.
For Afghan families living in central North Carolina, all they can do now is watch as their home country is taken over by the Taliban with concerns mounting for those left behind.
âEvery single family either inside Afghanistan or outside Afghanistan,â Frozan Sahel, who fled to the United States six years ago, said. âEvery single Afghan just lost their soul.â
See the full story on CBS17 here.
Learn how you can Help Our Afghan Allies with World Relief Durham HERE.