A new initiative on campus aims to support and welcome refugees, often the most vulnerable members of the community, arriving from all over the world to the Colorado Springs area. The CC Refugee Alliance is a group being co-led by Nicole Tan ’17 and Heather Powell Browne, assistant director of off-campus study.
“As an international student in the U.S, I think I’ve become acutely aware of the different privileges we have when we ask to enter a country,” Tan says of her motivation to organize this group. After a semester in Central America, I realized how different my entry into the U.S. was compared to undocumented migrants, who in many cases are also refugees fleeing from severe economic hardship and violence. I think this is what prompted my interest in refugees.”
Powell Browne says a variety of different people across campus were already looking for ways to help with the influx of refugees arriving in the Colorado Springs area. She hosted several volunteer trainings independently and had significant participation from members of the CC community. She says it made clear there was a need to consolidate efforts.
CC has partnered with Lutheran Family Services, an area organization which assembles cultural mentoring teams that “adopt” incoming refugee families and individuals for their first four to six months in the country, allowing CC faculty, staff, and students to add their support in a variety of roles.
“Those teams work best when they are diverse; a mix of faculty, staff, and students,” says Powell Browne. “We all have different capabilities and times we can help mentor and serve. For example, a staff or faculty team member may wish to have the refugee family over to their home one night for a dinner, or help call an elementary school to navigate a problem the parents are having. A student may have more flexibility to tutor ESL in the afternoons, or drive a refugee to a job interview or medical appointment.”
She says there are plenty of opportunities for individuals, student groups, athletics teams, and others to work with refugee kids after school, or to organize a one-time household goods drive of items needed to furnish refugees’ apartments when they arrive in a new country, often with nothing. “Everyone has their strengths and I hope that the CC Refugee Alliance will give us a space to work together to support these vulnerable people fleeing oppression,” she says.
Tan says she also hopes the group will start to put faces to the abstract idea of refugees. “Unless we intentionally seek these interactions, it’s very unlikely that we will come across refugees in our day to day lives,” she says. “I’d like to see CC step forwards to welcome refugees into our community.”
If you would like to learn more about how you can be involved in the CC Refugee Alliance, attend an information session next Friday, Sept. 16, from noon-1:30 p.m. at Sacred Grounds in the basement of Shove Memorial Chapel. Opportunities exist for ongoing cultural mentoring teams, one-time service projects and supply drives, English as a Second Language tutoring and language translation, help setting up apartments for new arrivals, resume proofreading and interview prep, and more.
