April 24, 2024
Hi Four Lakes Welcome Corps fans! I’m quite sure there are a couple of you. So here is an update. Our sweet family of four is doing pretty well, though there have been a few bumps in the road. Through the month of March, the family was housed in an “Air BnB” corporate apartment while we got to know each other and talked about the future. The family turned out to have some connections, a sister in Virginia, and they briefly considering moving to Virginia. However after considerable thought, they decided to stay in Madison. Deep thanks to our local neighborhood translators, who spent many hours going back and forth. It is hard moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language. Really really hard. and dealing with multiple bureaucracies, well we all have that problem.
Nonetheless, the parents are now actively taking English classes at the Madison Literacy Network twice a week, and see to be making some headway on our maddening language. English is very not an easy language. We are working with the State of Wisoncsin to enroll them in “Wisconsin Works”, our state “welfare’ system. It seems to be designed to prevent anyone from getting benefits. The family was evaluated and it was decided they we not ready to work because of the language barrier. They were assigned to take classes and do self study 10 hours a week. The reporting requirements are extensive and the detailed forms must be submitted each week. Yet the benefits appear to be quite small, far less than their rent. Thus we are moving forward to searching for work for the father, and possibly the mother, though with two children, childcare will be a major expense.
Fortunately jobs in Madison seem abundant, with many options. But without a car or drivers license there are some issues. Wish us luck!
In this moment of just under two months of actual sponsorship, our situations quite real. We have some serious responsibilities. The are continuing. They are crucial to our family. we need to keep on keeping on.
April 1 Update
Whelp, the family of four have now been here about three weeks, and things are going along quite well, I must say! Today we sign a lease for their new apartment and Tuesday is move in day. I’m not sure the family really has a picture of what’s about to happen, but they are going to love the new apartment and all the great neighbors they will soon have. We have found that — who knew? — there is a Congolese community here in Madison, and they are quickly hooking up to get advice and support from new peers. We are certainly here to help, but if you’re a 20 something person, hanging with 70 something ladies is not always the deal. But we are great baby sitters! The fam has lots of hurdles ahead, not the least is learning to speak English, which is unfortunately a seriously flawed language. So many words are spell oddly, sound exactly like other words, and have 245 meanings depending on context. They seem to be making a good effort, and with great classes at the Literacy Network, they will undoubtably soon be ordering big macs with elan. We’re here to help and launch them into independence and hopefully happiness in a safer more secure place to live.
They are Here!
Hi everyone! we are excited to let you know that yes, our family of four is here, has a place to live and is in the first stages of settling in. It is very challenging since we don’t speak swahili, and they don’t speak english, but we are getting along with lots of help from the local African community. We can’t share names or anything at this time, but anticipate some public announcement in the near future.
We have been matched!
Hi Everyone! Well, as of mid-December, we were officially matched with a young family residing in Tanzania in the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp. This young family has two small children, and will be traveling to madison Wisconsin to our warm welcome in the next few months. We couldn’t be much more excited to share one of the most livable cities in the USA with these young future citizens. Hopefully it won’t be 20 degrees below zero when they arrive. So far it has been a mild winter.
Wondering if you can help out? Yes you can! we will be needing clothes for a 2 year old, baby clothes, and the usual stuff like a play pen, changing table, stroller, and so on. Check out our needs list elsewhere on our website.
And one more thing. Think about getting involved in helping a refugee family. Right now over 10,000 people a day are coming across the southern border, looking for refuge. These are not murderers and rapists, but moms and dads, brothers and sisters just like you and I, who have been forced by circumstances, to flee their homes. There is lots of space and warmth here in our cities and small towns for new friends if we look. Thanks!
Updating
Hey to my very few subscribers, just an update on FLWC and our current status. As y9u probably noticed, we were approved as a well prepared Welcome Corps team. Time will tell if this is true, but we are as ready as we can be. Shortly after our approval, just before Thanksgiving, we were presented with a survey to help match us with a refugee family. It asked a rather long list of difficult questions, such as what kind of disabilities we would be willing to accept in refugees and such. So hard to say, oh now, we won’t accept people with autism, or PTSD. We waded through it as a group. It did not take 20 minutes, as we were told. So now we wait, hoping to be adequate to the job.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are having a fundraiser at Ian’s Pizza at Olbrich Gardens, as we twiddle our thumbs. Information on our home page. Your support is always appreciated. Interestingly, we still have every dime we have raised, our only expenses so far having been this website, which was paid for by our team Member Lou. In fact we have made a little interest on the money as we have put it in a CD. Soon perhaps we will be spending it on a family. Hoping you are all well. will keep you posted. By the way, we will be at Ian’s Pizza on Wednesday, December 13 in person form about 6 to 7:30. C’mon by and have a slice. The pizza is quite good!
Connections and waiting.
So about 3 weeks ago, we completed our application to become a Welcome Corps Private Sponsor, and be matched with a family of four. What followed was interesting… We heard back fairly quickly from an unknown person, (a member of the “Welcome Corps Team”) with some questions. All of them were pretty easily disposed of, and we quickly replied. About the same time, we began to hear about something called a PSO, which if you deal with Washington be prepared to deal with a lot of acronyms, stands for a “Private Sponsorship Organization”. Turns our, we surmise, the WC in DC (see what I mean) decided that PSG’s (Private sponsorship Groups, that’s us) needed a bit of help, which HQ was not very well prepared to provide. So with a little trepidation, we chose to work with a PSO known as Alight, mainly because they happened to have a local person here in Madison we thought would be convenient to work with and she seemed nice. The jury is out on that, because Kathi, the local person, is really just charged with helping people get started. We were beyond that, and we were assigned to another nice person, who we zoomed with this week, Ana. Three of us peppered her with questions and she took it all in stride and promised to get back.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Alight as part of their services, notified the Wisconsin State Bureau of Refugee Services we existed, and they reached out and we had a lengthy zoom call with Savitri J. Tsering, Wisconsin Refugee Health Coordinator, and Bojana Zorić Martinez, Director of the Bureau. Really interesting folks and we appreciate them reaching out to us. We learned a lot, some of which I remember.
So what’s the comeuppance? Well, it looks like it could be several months, maybe 6, maybe less, before we get to actually meet a refugee family at the airport. We have to first be matched, where they choose us, and decide that moving to Madison Wisconsin is a good idea, and then we get a chance to say yes, which we will, and then they travel, and so on. Meanwhile thousands of refugees pour across the southern border and the Biden Administration is trying to deal with that. And Welcome Corps is struggling a little to get moving and on their feet.
A lot of us originally thought this could become a really powerful new tool to help refugees in the USA and supplement the Refugee Agencies, and maybe it still will. But so far, it’s more of an idea that a reality. Sigh.
As they used to say in the army, during the Vietnam war, Situation Normal, AFU. (disclaimer: i was not in the war, but I was here, protesting)
Application Time
So, the curious 3 people who see this want to know, what’s up with Four Lakes Welcome Corps? Well, we are working. We’re working on our application. Because, the National Office of Welcome Corps seriously wants us to be on top of things, organized, and ready for the unexpected stuff that will no doubt happen. So we’re looking for apartments and collecting furnishings, which is going well. We have a ton of stuff already, and more coming. and we're researching a lot of other stuff, like translation and interpretation. We need it, but we don’t know exactly what we need.. Because we don’t yet know what languages the people we will welcome will speak. But if you speak Swahili, we’d like to talk to you. Meanwhile, we’re filling in the forms and plan to send in our application at the end of this week. Then we will celebrate!
Taking an attitude of humility
So yesterday, I did something I’ve done before. I picked up a nice woman and drove her to Chicago for a hearing at immigration court. Actually, it was something I rarely do, the drive to Chicago. But I’ve driven newcomers to Milwaukee many times, as well as to Waukegan, Il. So anyway, besides having to get up really early and driving in the rain, it all went pretty well. We had a little trouble finding the court, but got there in time. She was sweet, and we hugged when I dropped her off.
But I’m realizing now I made a mistake, and though well intentioned, I screwed up. What, you ask? Well, we were sitting having some food (at the Belvedere Oasis, no less) and via google translate I asked her to tell me her story. Where are you from? I was curious. Her reaction was to be upset. I thought it might be the translator, which is undependable. But now I have begun to suspect it was something else: I was prying. Instead of just being her driver/companion, I was putting her on the spot without knowing how that might affect her. And, well it didn’t go well. She called a friend and her friend helped me understand a little. But I now know I was just indulging in my own curiosity.
Interestingly, this morning I was going through the training modules for Welcome Corps, which I have a tendency to mock (well they are pretty silly at times) and they said, basically, to take an attitude of humility. The people whom we hope to sponsor have lifetime of experience, possibly including trauma. Let Let them share their stories if they wish to, but wait and don’t overstep like I did. I’m not sharing my own traumas with every stranger, trust me. And we shouldn’t expect people to bare their souls to us.
So that’s it, taking an attitude of humility. Go ahead, mock me. I know it’s a bit simplistic. So shoot me.
Happy Growth
So we just had our refugee dinner, which was a big effort. We did well, and raised a bunch of money. But a funny thing happened along the way., with this whole project. I got happier. I made new good friends. I hugged more people. My life got better, though it was good before. Unintended happy consequences. As we move on to actually having refugees to help, I anticipate more. .
Working out
This Friday, July 21 we will be holding a fundraising event, an Internationally themed dinner. The dinner, which will start at 6 pm, will feature Senegambian food which will include vegetarian and vegan dishes, a Hmong salad, and numerous desserts from around the world. It will be held at First Unitarian Society in west Madison.
Most importantly, it is going to be a festive chance for people to get together and learn more about the Welcome Corps program and our local efforts.
You are invited to join us! While we are asking for a donation of $35 per person ($15 for kids), please don’t let that be a barrier to attending. All are passionately welcome. After all, it’s in our name isn’t it? Welcome.
While talking to the good folks at WORT this week, Liz and had a chance to talk about why we are doing this project, and some thoughts came to mind that are worth repeating. One is how much this work has been a positive for all of us working on it. Gathering together and pooling our resources, both monetary and talent wise, has been just a heart warming experience. Seeing how people step up and contribute. Finding hidden talents. And making new friends has been uplifting. Building a community based on a shared goal.
Second is how the future looks, and how we are preparing for it. As global climate change progresses, and we are seeing it every day now, we need to give thought to how we as humans are going to behave. And I for one am not willing to turn my back on those whose homes are lost to whatever symptom of climate calamity may befall them, from economic collapse, persecution, flooding, heat, sea level rising — the list is Long and growing. Yes, we can close our border and build walls with barb wire and gun towers. Bu I for one don’t want to be in that nation, surrounded by poor desperate fellow humans. So learning how to help and integrate refugees to our community is a necessary skill we all should be learning. And a sense of humility should we become refugees ourselves.
I strongly believe there are sufficient resources in this world for all of us if we work together cooperatively. But it is a muscle we need to exercise. Four Lakes Welcome Corps is our small way to help build those muscles.
Minnesota Welcomes Family
So leave it to our neighbors to the west, who not only have so many progressive policies that started in Wisconsin and now have been ended, to be the first folks to complete what we all hope will be many many successful Private Refugee Sponsorships. NPR did a great story on it, and here is a link to that story. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/1183931386/the-first-refugees-privately-sponsored-by-americans-have-arrived-in-the-u-s So heartening
Getting Started
As we enter our fourth month of organizing, I have learned a few lessons about starting a project like Welcome Corps. First, and I know you know this, is everything takes forever. Maybe longer. When I first started trying to get this going, I thought I’d just recruit a few neighbors, we’d pool some funds, and… well to be honest, I probably didn’t bother to go past that. I’m not by nature a planner. When I take vacations, I just go with the flow. Of course this means you occasionally end up on a tropical island in hurricane season, but that’s interesting, right?
So Welcome Corps has been a journey, and mostly just one step at a time. Someone reads a blog, sends me an e-mail, and then we have a new friend. Actually 12 or 15 new friends! And we are not in a hurricane, but it is taking longer than I’d like. I can feel a family we could help, waiting in a refugee camp somewhere. It gives me a sense of urgency.
On the other hand, we need to do our homework. For example, everyone on our team, and I mean all of us, have to have a background check. I guess that’s understandable. And we have to have most of the funds we need to support the family for at least 3 months, in the bank. That is proving a challenge. We have about 1/3 of it. But that means — ugh — asking people for money. If you’re anything like me, you get asked daily, to support good things. the ACLU, the SPLA, Tammy Baldwin, the list goes on. And I do contribute, but in fact that seems to mean I definitely get asked more and more. An obviously unsustainable spiral. And yet, here I am, asking you for money to support this as yet unknown family.
So in the spirit of making lemonade from citrus fruit, we’re throwing a party. We’re calling the Refugee Benefit dinner, and it will be a chance to learn about us, the national Welcome Corps vision, and eat a nice meal catered by some recentish immigrants. It’s going to be pretty cheap - $35 for adults, $15 for kids, and promise it will be fun and low pressure. Yes, we’ll give you a chance to give more if so moved, but mostly it’s gonna be warm and festive and tasty. Please consider coming. You can RSVP on our website, fourlakeswelcomecorps.org.
Meanwhile, hang in there. Hopefully we’ll get little rain, and the corn crop will be ok.