Neighbors and Friends
Working Together.
Four Lakes Welcome Corps is an opportunity for people in the Madison area to welcome refugees seeking freedom and safety.
We are reaching out to people
on the other side of the world.
Who is the Four Lakes Welcome Corps? We are a small group of Madison area neighbors who got tired of
1) Hearing about refugees fleeing the unthinkable: war, famine, genocide.
2) Thinking, well, “put up or shut up.” Can we help some folks if we band together? (answer: yup!) and
3) heard about the new federal program (Welcome Corps) to allow private sponsorship of refugee families.
So we signed up and after journey of over a year, we are now Private Sponsors of a family of four. They are amazingly resilient having grown up in a refugee camp in Tanzania their whole lives, and we all laugh together a lot as we learn together how to live in America. Fortunately we have a stellar team of generous people, and mostly all the money we need, donations are always welcome (see our GO-Fund-Me link).
The process has been both a growth and a love. We are all already better people.
We could go on and on about the Welcome Corps, which has evolved as we have gone through the process, but they explain it well on their website. www.welcomecorps.org.
Who We Are…
Through the federal Welcome Corps program, we’re a group of Madisonians preparing to welcome refugees who have lost their homes due to persecution, war, and other disasters. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are currently over 108 million people who are forcibly displaced worldwide. We strongly believe that the people of Madison are warm, generous, welcoming, and want to help. And that’s what Four Lakes Welcome Corps is all about.
Our Story
Four Lakes Welcome Corps got its start when several of us met some refugees and got to know them. Hearing their stories made us want to do more. When the federally sponsored program Welcome Corps Program began January 2023, we decided to join together to form a Private Sponsor Group to support refugee newcomers.
Refugees are courageous, modest, and inspirational people. Being a refugee means you have been forced to leave everything you know and run for your life. It means taking your life savings, however small, and venturing into the unknown. It means witnessing death, torture, rape and more. It means saving the lives of your family, even though you’re sacrificing everything.
It’s incredibly exciting and humbling to know we can provide assistance to these people and help them find a safe harbor in our beautiful and peaceful Midwest city. We just have to join hands and reach out. They’re literally waiting right now for us to do it.
Get Involved with Welcome Corps
OK at the moment, Four Lakes Welcome is really well supplied with people to help. Bless us, we have a team of 16, and we’re an awesome group. However, our vision is we want hundreds, no thousands of Welcome Corps teams to form. We want to help, and there is even an official group whose job it is to help you help! So can we officially connect you to the awesome folks at Alight? Kathi Seiden-Thomas is your woman, and she will help your group. And please tell them Roberta of Four Lakes sent you. But please reach out to us too. We want to share our experiences.
Thanks to Francesca, Deb, Martin, and Joy for teaming up to transport Joy’s bed to the FLWC storage site, on a hot July 4th. The donations team is in high gear. Please check-out our list of needed furnishings.
Your FLWC Donations team