Reaching Out

Since the Process for Venezuelans was announced, Home for Refugees has been inundated with pleas for help from individuals and families desperate to escape. Over Twitter and Instagram, through emails and WhatsApp, hundreds and hundreds of people have contacted us. We had to take the interest form on our website offline because we were beyond capacity. Here is just a small sampling of the messages we have been receiving [note: messages have been printed as-is, but names and some details have been altered or omitted for security reasons]:

“I am writing to ask for your help in my search for a legal sponsor, since I do not have a person who meets the requirements to apply. The crisis has covered my family in Venezuela and I would really give everything to help them with the effort of my work I am an honest, helpful person, participated in voluntary circles in my life as a university student, my whole family has suffered because of his political position since in Venezuela there is no freedom of expression, since 2015 we have actively participated as leaders in projects of opposition parties for our city, until they managed to persecute my family and some uncles had to flee the country to be able to live, that is why my nephews, brothers and cousins are not accepted in universities or public schools, and it is difficult to find work, I have received threats since I am a girl because of our political position.I am 21 years old and since I can remember I have fought against the regime. Now I need to flee to help my relatives in Venezuela to survive and have a future. Please help me find a group or person who wants to help me.
I thank you with all my heart if you can read me and reply to this message. I request help, God bless you”

“Hola, buenas tardes, soy venezolana, y quisiera pedirles si por favor me pueden ayudar a conseguir un patrocinador en USA. para mí, mi esposo y mi hija, ya que estamos viviendo una situacion difícil que no nos permite tener el sustento básico, como lo es el alimento, entre otros. De todo corazón les agradecería que nos ayudaran, y que Dios los bendiga y multiplique toda la ayuda que nos puedan brindar.”

”Hello I am Venezuelan, and I would like to ask if You could please to help me to get a sponsor in the USA, for me, my husband, and my daughter, because we would like to enter the humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans.We are living a difficult situation that does not allow us to have the basic sustenance, such as food, among others. From the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for your help, and may God bless you and multiply all the help you can give us.”

“I am Venezuelan and gay, I am 22 years old. Desperate to get out of here, I can't live my life as I am... my parents don't know I'm gay, in my country there are no LGBTQ rights and I don't see opportunities for approval. I need help.”

The messages continue. Shortly after announcing the Process for Venezuelans, the U.S. government announced similar programs for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans as well, calling it the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (or CHNV for short). As word of these programs continues to spread, we fully expect to see more and more people reaching out to us, desperate for help. But the news and the stories are not always so heavy. As we'll see in our next story, at Home for Refugees we get to experience the joys of resettlement too as we walk alongside our families as they build their new lives. 

A Bright Spot

by Lynne Abraham-Yadlin, Home Team Coach

The first year of resettlement is almost always the toughest for a refugee family. Moving to a new country far from family and friends, adjusting to a new culture and a new language, struggling to find a job, struggling to fit in at school, trying to build a new life nearly from scratch—it can all be discouraging and overwhelming. But despite the odds, over the year that Home for Refugees' Home Teams spend with their families, we get to see many victories too.

Rajon Rizvi arrived in the United States in December of 2021 with his wife and then 2-year- old son, after escaping from Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul in August of that same year. He was paired with Home Team 55 and moved into an apartment near his sister in Garden Grove, California. In Afghanistan, Rajon had worked as a Cultural Affairs Assistant for the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Government managing and writing grants for exchange programs. Always independent and extremely resourceful, Rajon was able to find an entry level job in the U.S. with Deutsche Bank that enabled him to pay his rent and care for his growing family, which included the addition of an adorable daughter born on April 9, 2022. But it became clear quite quickly that Rajon was looking for something more. “I wanted to get into a career that would provide long-term prospective for growth," he said.  

Through a connection to a mentor he met at a speaking engagement, Rajon became aware of Salesforce, a company that, as described on their web site, “makes cloud-based software designed to help businesses find more prospects, close more deals, and wow customers with amazing service”. This mentor suggested that Rajon might want to equip himself to apply for a job with Salesforce, but made it clear that this would involve passing an extremely rigorous exam which would require a deep and broad knowledge of IT and a specific skill set that Rajon didn’t really have. Undaunted, Rajon began the preparation process, working with his mentor and studying to prepare for the exam, despite working a full-time job and working overtime on Saturdays just to make enough money to survive.  

Rajon spent months studying whenever he could find the time: nights, weekends, the occasional Federal holiday. It took three tries, but eventually Rajon prevailed and was able to successfully pass the rigorous exam. His hope now is to find employment at one of Salesforce’s many locations and to be able to provide for his family in the way he was accustomed to back in Afghanistan. He is currently looking for employment as a Salesforce Administrator. He’s hoping to start with a smaller company to get some work experience, and he is also already studying for the next level certification, hoping this will provide a wider variety of job opportunities. 

*Names changed for security reasons.

We Don't Talk About Venezuela

By Brian Ng, Communications Coordinator and Home Team Coach

It was a Friday evening in Acarigua, Venezuela, and Juan's wife called and told him not to come home. Not because she was mad at him, but because there was a van from the Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar (DGCIM) sitting outside their house. The DGCIM is the intelligence arm of the Nicolás Maduro's regime. They were waiting there to take Juan away. Either to prison, as they had already done once before, or maybe this time to whatever place the regime takes people they never want to hear from again. To wherever it is you can make people disappear forever. 

Thanks to his wife's warning and a sympathetic neighbor who let him hide, Juan remained safe. But that isn't the case for so many of his colleagues and countryman who have been thrown in prison or killed for speaking out against Maduro and his henchman. But who is Juan, why does Maduro want him silenced, and what exactly is going on in Venezuela? 

The current situation in Venezuela is complicated. Over the last nine years it's estimated that more than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country as refugees. Soaring inflation, a lack of affordable food, massive unemployment, and increasing violence in the streets by gangs and government-sanctioned groups are just a handful of the causes behind this mass exodus. But at the root of it all is a corrupt and dictatorial government, led by Maduro, who took power in 2013.

A series of ill-conceived policy decisions by Maduro and his political allies has since brought Venezuela's economy to its knees. Critics of the Maduro regime have been thrown in jail or outright killed. Marches and protests in the streets are met with violence from the government. And while Venezuela's neighboring countries have for the most part done their best to welcome the millions of Venezuelans fleeing poverty, famine, and violence, the rest of the world has largely remained indifferent.

Juan is a professor of history and a political activist, a husband and a father. When he spoke out against the corruption he saw being committed by a well-connected official at the university where he worked, Juan was thrown in jail and tortured before eventually being released. Since then, he and his family have been threatened, put under surveillance, and their home has been tagged by the government. Juan knows that if he doesn't get out of Venezuela soon, he and his family will never be safe as long as Maduro is in power.

In October of 2022, the United States government announced the Process for Venezuelans, a program that gives a pathway for Venezuelans to legally enter and find safe haven in the U.S for two years under what is called Humanitarian Parole status. It is very similar to the Uniting for Ukraine program under which HFR has been welcoming Ukrainian families since last April. 

As soon as he heard about the Process for Venezuelans, Juan began to reach out to every organization he could find that might be able to help. Of the more than 50 places he tried to contact, Juan told us that we were the only group that replied back. Home for Refugees is currently in the process of getting Juan and his family safely to the United States. Sponsors for the family have stepped up, and the applications are being processed. If everything goes according to plan, Juan and his family will soon arrive in the U.S. as the first Venezuelan family to officially be welcomed and resettled by HFR.

*Names changed for security reasons.

Welcome the Sacali Family

The Sacali Family of four began to wonder what the future would hold as Russian infantry rumbled across the Eastern border of their country, and bombs began to fall. Thankfully, the Uniting for Ukraine program was launched by the U.S. government earlier this year to provide a safe and orderly means for Ukrainians displaced by conflict in Ukraine through a U.S. sponsor to come to America. Home for Refugees partnered with Welcome.US' Welcome Connect for matching and Community Sponsorship Hub for support.

The Sacali Family of four began to wonder what the future would hold as Russian infantry rumbled across the Eastern border of their country, and bombs began to fall. Thankfully, the Uniting for Ukraine program was launched by the U.S. government earlier this year to provide a safe and orderly means for Ukrainians displaced by conflict in Ukraine through a U.S. sponsor to come to America. Home for Refugees partnered with Welcome.US' Welcome Connect for matching and Community Sponsorship Hub for support.

Our Home Team that was partnered with the Sacali Family is from St. Peters by the Sea Presbyterian Church in Huntington Beach, California in the Los Ranchos Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church USA whose pastor is Rev. Steve Wright. In this case, the Sacali family also had a 3rd special partnership with the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law's Humanitarian Clinic to help give guidance through the sponsorship process to facilitate their approval. Here is part of their journey over the last seven months of messaging, planning, and waiting. Once our family and our Home Team were matched, we messaged them to begin to lead them through the process with the Home Team members as their U.S. sponsors.

HFR: Hi Mr. and Mrs. Sacali! This is Andrea Castillo from Home for Refugees USA. Thank you for your patience waiting for our message regarding next steps. We are happy to say everything is good. We are getting ready to start [the sponsor process and the whole team is excited to welcome you soon!

Sacali Family: Hello! On behalf of our family, we would like to thank you very much! We really appreciate it! Due to the missile attacks on Kyiv and critical infrastructure facilities today, we have no electricity now. Therefore, I can answer with a delay. I apologize for that. Also, if there is an air attack, we will be in the bomb shelter. There is no communication and no internet.

The Long Road Trip Home

By Allie Clerget

When you picture your life, you never imagine that one day you will be rummaging through the rubble that was your apartment building, holding your two-year-old and what belongings you manage to salvage in your arms. And yet that was reality for the Zablotska family* after Russia bombed their home. With such a young child and an uncertain future ahead, the Zablotskas knew they could not remain in Ukraine during wartime. So in May of 2022, they decided to gather all the belongings they had left, pack the family into their car, and flee Ukraine. They spent the next five weeks driving from city to city, country to country in Europe, sometimes finding people they could stay with temporarily, sometimes sleeping in their car. And all the while, they were looking for a safe way to get to the United States. 

The Zablotskas did not have any family in the U.S. who could receive and support them. As they moved from place to place, the hope of finding stability in the near future kept them going while they waited to connect with a U.S. sponsor. Finally, after months of living out of their car, they were matched with a team of sponsors in Whitefish, Montana.

What a relief to find a place to settle down and call home. Little did the Zablotskas realize just how much support they would find in their new community. The team welcomed the family at the airport and brought them to the guest housing they had prepared for them in Whitefish. Right away the team connected the family to multiple community resources and social services, and after just a couple of weeks the family was able to move into long-term housing.

And the story gets better. When the Zablotskas met with their new landlord to sign their contract, they had a chance to share their story with them. Their landlord was so moved and grateful to be a part of their journey that they created an Amazon wish list to help furnish the apartment. And after sharing the wish list with other members in the community, a mere 48 hours later the entire wish list was fulfilled and the Zablotskas had a fully furnished home thanks to the generosity of their new community. 

This is just one beautiful example of how a community can come together and support a refugee family that is being resettled. Every community has exactly what each refugee family needs, and sometimes all it takes is sharing their story to inspire the rest of the community to come fill in the gaps and help the family build a new future and a new home.

*Family name changed for security reasons.

A Message from Minda

Since the launch of the Uniting for Ukraine program, Home for Refugees has helped bring 14 families to the U.S. from Ukraine, and in December we had the pleasure of welcoming our first Ukrainian family to settle in California. You can read more about their story here in our most recent fundraising letter. Seeing the tiredness and anxiety on their faces when they walked out of the airport tunnel turn into smiles of joy and relief when they walked into their new temporary home in Huntington Beach was truly a heartwarming moment in a time when we can all use all the heartwarming moments we can get. And this family is only one of more than 100,000 Ukrainians who will come to the United States by the time the Uniting for Ukraine program ends.

Seeing the success of Uniting for Ukraine, the U.S. recently created a similar program for Venezuelans fleeing persecution and the fallout from the catastrophic policies of the Maduro-led government and the resulting economic collapse of the country. Since the Process for Venezuelans program was announced, Home for Refugees has been inundated with pleas for help—so many that we had to take our interest form offline temporarily due to the overwhelming response. And in fact, we are working right now to bring our first family from Venezuela to the U.S., a professor and his family who are currently being persecuted by the Venezuelan government.

At the same time, we are trying to help so many more families from all over the world find a new home here in the U.S., and we cannot do it without your help. Please consider partnering with us by becoming a sponsor, joining a home team, or donating generously to the cause. We need your participation and support more than ever so that we can continue to help more families like these.

World Refugee Day 2021

Celebrated every year on June 20th, World Refugee Day is an international day, originally established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on June 20th, 2001. World Refugee Day was created with the goal of celebrating the strength and courage of forcibly displaced people around the world, and to help build empathy and understanding for the challenges facing refugees.

Home for Refugees takes this opportunity every year to celebrate the contributions of refugees globally, as well as raise awareness: Who are refugees? What are the challenges currently facing refugees? And, how can people from the community help refugees achieve and sustain new homes with dignity?

This year, Home for Refugees as a member of the Refugee Forum of Los Angeles (RFLA), chaired the planning committee in creating Los Angeles’ World Refugee Day 2021 Virtual Event “Breaking Bread.” The goal of the event was to share important resources and information that would be useful for a refugee attempting to start a new business.

The event included guest speaker Ms. Wai-Ling Chin, Business Counselor Manager for the Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment (PACE) who spoke about how refugees can start their own small business. Our second guest speaker was Mr. Luke Van Lant, a Financial Capability Coordinator for the International Rescue Committee in Los Angeles. Mr. Van Lant’s talk focused on consumer lending and credit-building for refugees.

The event also included a cooking demonstration by a couple who are former Guatemalan refugees. Chef Ever and his wife Chef Edelma, demonstrated how to make Garnachas, a traditional popular taco dish from Guatemala, composed of fried corn tortillas topped with refried beans, shredded cabbage, cheese, and other garnishes. Those guests who RSVP'd for the event were sent the recipe and an ingredient list. Guests were invited to cook alongside the demonstration. The event has been viewed over 500 times since. “Breaking Bread” is currently available on the Refugee Forum of Los Angeles’ Facebook Page and can be viewed here >> https://fb.me/e/QfiHkhYE.

We hope to continue to use Ms. Chin’s and Mr. Van Lant’s presentations and our RFLA’s "Starting Your Own Business Resource Guide" with the refugees in HFR’s resettlement program. Also, we will be frequently using the RFLA’s "Greater LA Area Restaurant Guide" that our planning team created to support refugee and immigrant owned restaurants.

If you are in the greater Los Angeles area and are interested in supporting refugee owned restaurants or learning more about starting you own, check out our guides below!

RFLA’s Starting Your Own Business Resource guide >>
https://bit.ly/WRD2021Resource

RFLA’s Greater LA Area Restaurant guide >>
http://bit.ly/WRD2021restaurant

Lynne, one of our Home Team coaching staff, took part in our virtual LA World Refugee Day as a guest. Here are her thoughts:

“I so enjoyed participating in Refugee Forum of LA’s Los Angeles’ World Refugee Day 2021, both as a person who likes to cook and a Home Team Coach. The cooking demo was fun—it allowed my husband and me to try a recipe we otherwise wouldn’t have tried, and the end result was delicious. I confess that we tweaked the recipe a bit to suit our tastes, but I think we captured the essence of the Garnachas.

For me as a Home Team Coach, the information shared during the second half about aids and tools for refugees interested in starting their own businesses was invaluable. I can think of so many refugee families I’ve encountered that would love to have this information. Often our families start with entry level jobs as they first try to build their lives in this country, but dream of more independence and a more fulfilling way of earning a living.

These tools could absolutely help them making this dream come true. I have already shared the presentations and resource guides with a refugee family that I hope will take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the participating organizations to build a more flourishing life.”

International Day of Families

For International Day of Families we wanted to share the story of one of the asylum families we are helping resettle after they were reunified with their child in 2019 after being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018.

Sancho Juarez* had a happy life with his wife, Bella, and four kids living right outside of Guatemala City, Guatemala. That suddenly changed for Sancho after his middle son, Juan was targeted by local gang members. Sancho fled his home with Juan to keep Juan safe. Sancho knew that once you are targeted by a gang, your life is in danger and you will always be a target.

Sancho and Juan started their journey alone, because it was far too expensive for all the family to go. They made their way to the United States-Mexico border, where they hoped to ask for protection and to be considered for asylum. Sadly, although they asked to be considered for asylum in the legal way, they were met at the border with an executive order that broke them apart. Sancho was separated from Juan and immediately deported back to Guatemala, while Juan was kept in the United States.

In 2019, a year after the separation, the Juarez family were brought to the United States-Mexico border again, but this time with the organizational backing of Home for Refugees, Al Otro Lado, Together Rising, Matthew 25, and World Relief. Sancho planned to ask for asylum to be reunified with Juan. This time the Juarez family got accepted into the United States asylum-seeking process, reunified with their son, and was settled by our collaborative project in Akron, Ohio. The Juarez family has been partnered for the past 2 1/2 years during their asylum-seeking legal process by their Home Team, from a church in their community.

*All names are changed for privacy 

Easter Basket Distribution

During the month of March, Home for Refugees partnered with Eastside Christian Church in Anaheim, California for their 21 Days of Service to create Easter baskets filled with plastic eggs, candy, and crafts for the children of the families in our community sponsorship program.

Through Easter baskets, we got to share the fun American egg hunt tradition with our refugee kids. Our original plan was to hand-deliver the baskets to our families who live locally in Orange County, but we got a good volunteer response to create baskets that we added the option to send Easter baskets through Amazon to our families across the United States.  

We delivered baskets to our local families over two weekends. On the first weekend, our volunteers delivered seven baskets. Two of those baskets went to the Méndez* family's young daughters, who are recently arrived from Guatemala. It was a joy to see the smiles on the girls’ faces as they unpacked their baskets to find craft activities and colorful Easter eggs filled with candy. One of the daughters was so excited to receive her basket, that she asked for a second basket! We happened to bring an extra one with us, so we couldn’t help but give it to her. We watched as the girls shared the three baskets and dove into the candy with delight.  

On the second weekend, 35 baskets were delivered locally. A few of the baskets went to our newest family arrival, the Azimi* family who are from Afghanistan. The Azimi had recently received some difficult family news, but the delivery of Easter baskets for their four kids brought smiles all around.

The Azimi family's daughter was visiting a neighbor’s house when the Easter baskets were delivered and she had no idea what was waiting for her at home. Meanwhile, another group of volunteers happened to deliver baskets to their neighbors the daughter was visiting. The neighboring Afghan family of six kids gleamed with excitement as they accepted the baskets and began looking through them. A volunteer recognized the Azimi's daughter and said, “Hi!” Our volunteer team chatted with the neighboring Afghan family with six kids for a bit. As the volunteers were leaving, the Azimi's daughter walked past the group with the biggest smile as she swung her basket to and fro that she had found had been dropped off at her apartment. She stopped every ten feet, turned around, and said, “hi!” to all the volunteers. Each volunteer left filled with joy at the memory of the daughter’s lively hellos and felt grateful to have shared a fun American tradition with our families.

During the week before Easter, eight Easter baskets kits were sent to our families across the U.S. In total, 50 kids received baskets across 16 refugee families. We are certain that each family's house was filled with smiles and cheer as they experienced the American Easter egg tradition.

*Names changed for security reasons.

Click below to watch a video of highlights from the distribution day.