by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
Jacksonville residents will soon have another opportunity to help the less fortunate.
More than 80 refugees from the Karen and Chin groups in Burma will make their way to the First Coast over the next four months as part of a national federally funded Refugee Resettlement Program. One of the refugees’ hosts, Catholic Charities, encourages community members to serve as extended ambassadors to the refugee families by donating household items to help them get adjusted to life in the United States.
According to Catholic Charities’ Refugee Resettlement Director Patricia Madrid this is the first year that Catholic Charities has requested help from the community through donations.
“The Refugee Resettlement Program in Jacksonville needs help from the community to meet the immediate needs of the newly arriving refugees,” she said. “The opportunity for our community to band together to help these newcomers is upon us and the Resettlement Program at Catholic Charities cannot do it alone.”
Madrid said individuals who wish to donate items, such as home goods, furniture, personal hygiene kits or cleaning and maintenance supplies, can drop items off at the organization’s new donation center or give them to the refugee in person.
The program, which started in 2002, will legally relocate more that 15,000 refugees – defined by international law as people who are unable or unwilling to return to their countries because of fear of persecution based on their personal beliefs – to the United States by 2007. Countries who have participated in the program in the past include: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Russia, Sudan and Liberia.
Madrid said approximately more than 140,000 Burmese refugees currently live in nine refugee camps in neighboring Thailand in unsanitary living conditions with limited medical care, food and water supply.
There are two other agencies that help with the program locally – Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida and World Relief – and dozens of other national agencies help, too.
Lutheran Social Services, in collaboration with the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and other LIRS-affiliated agencies across the country, recently celebrated World Refugee Day June 15 with a festival called, “A New Home, A New Life.”
“Lutheran Social Services is a little larger than we are and so they can help the refugees with some of the things that we can’t,” said Madrid.
The process for resettlement begins with an approval letter from the refugee’s country verifying that the refugee can relocate, said Madrid. Once the agency assisting that individual gets the approval, they pick up the refugee and take them to an apartment that has been designated for them ahead of time. Each refugee is allotted a one-time federal fund of $425 that the agency uses on their behalf to purchase enough necessary living supplies to last for 30 days. After their first 30 days here, the agency helps them apply for Medicaid, and/or food stamps and any other available assistance they might qualify for.
“The goal is to get them employed and self sufficient within three months, and most of them do that,” said Madrid.
Other services are also available to help refugees get acclimated to life in the United States, including free English classes at FCCJ and child day care.
Madrid said all refugee donations, including monetary donations, are welcome. For more information on making donations, call 354-4846 or visit www.ccbjax.org.