A new initiative on campus aims to support and welcome refugees arriving from all over the world to the Colorado Springs area. The CC Refugee Alliance is partnering with Lutheran Family Services, an area organization that assembles cultural mentoring teams that “adopt” incoming refugee families and individuals for their first four to six months in the country. Approximately 120 CC faculty, staff, students, and recent alumni in the area have signed up, helping fulfill such needs as family mentoring, ESL tutoring, preparing a “first-night” welcome dinner, and collecting furniture for the refugees’ new apartment. “This has struck a major, wonderful nerve of resonance with so many,” says Heather Powell Browne, co-founder and staff advisor for the CC Refugee Alliance.

“I regularly get teary in coordinating and connecting, and hearing narratives from the CC Refugee Alliance members about their motivations for why they are participating. The simplest one I’ve heard yet is, ‘Because if I were ever in the situation myself, I would want people to do the same for me.’”