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Cause for Thanksgiving: CWS helps Gulf hurricane survivors get a fresh start
Mildred Johnson
Photo: Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas
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Greensboro, NC – In past years, Mildred Johnson's focus at Thanksgiving was on what to cook. But this year, the holiday clearly is all about being thankful.
Johnson, who lost her home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina and relocated to Greensboro, is grateful for the roof over her head and the fact that her family escaped safely. "We're thankful that we're alive," Johnson said.
The Sunday before Hurricane Katrina hit, she and her family moved to her hometown in northern Louisiana. Johnson stayed there until Hurricane Rita hit close by and then her sister in Greensboro told her she should consider moving to North Carolina. She moved to Greensboro toward the end of September.
Johnson's sister's church has a job link program, which told her about Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas (LFS), a faith-based human service agency. LFS has a refugee and immigration resettlement program and is jointly affiliated with Church World Service and with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
As part of a Church World Service-funded program, LFS is helping people in North and South Carolina who were displaced by the Gulf Hurricanes, and the agency needed a job developer for its evacuee assistance program. Johnson has more than seven years of workforce development experience, assisting dislocated, unemployed and underemployed people to find jobs. She interviewed for the job and was hired. That same week, she found an apartment and received donated furniture from LFS.
Johnson said, "I have rolled up my sleeves to give back to the community and am making the best of a bad situation."
Still dealing with the loss of her own home in New Orleans, she has thrown herself into her new job. She already has found one company – Furniture Land South - that has more than a dozen open positions, and set up interviews for 15 evacuees at the company’s offices Nov. 17.
LFS also hired two other Gulf Coast evacuees, Dr. Victoria Tackett, a professor of psychology, is a case manager in its Raleigh office and Horace Blanding is a resource specialist in Columbia, S.C.
"They have lost most of their belongings, but not the courage and the willingness to help their own community," said Nasi Kajana who is overseeing LFS's evacuee assistance program in Greensboro and Raleigh. "Although they are looking to establish themselves in our area, these candidates did not hesitate when they learned the positions were short-term. As we continue to help others, our efforts are rejuvenated by these great examples of perseverance and resilience."
By the end of October, LFS assessed 227 evacuees' needs in Greensboro; in Raleigh, LFS and Catholic Social Ministries jointly assessed 649 people’s needs. In Columbia, SC, has partnered with the South Carolina Emergency Management Division to lead housing assistance efforts for more than 5,000 evacuees.
"Congregational support continues to increase and more churches are paired with families every week. Churches of different denominations and backgrounds, small and large, have all come together to provide support and resources and great partnership with each other," Kajana said.
"Amazing efforts continue to take place," he said. "Ninety-five percent of our clients have moved to permanent housing. Meeting the clients' needs for furniture and household goods has continued to be a challenge but a manageable one. We have housed them initially with the basic necessities and continue to furnish their apartments as more donations are provided."
Partnerships between local congregations and refugee resettlement agencies, including LFS, are key to the support Church World Service (CWS), a humanitarian agency, is providing in 10 states to persons displaced by the Gulf hurricanes.
CWS is working with its Miami Office and eight of its local resettlement affiliates in communities across the U.S. to provide comprehensive, individualized services to Gulf Coast residents who have relocated to their communities.
Resettlement agencies train participating congregations on ways they can provide moral and material support in order to assist these uprooted people as they recover their dignity and regain self-sufficiency in their new communities, whether their stay ultimately is short- or long-term.
Giving priority to people most in need, the CWS program is helping hurricane evacuees sort out the myriad disaster relief programs; find jobs, health care, and affordable housing and furnishings; get their children enrolled in school, and get oriented to and integrated into their new communities.
"This privately funded program takes the professional case management and congregational co-sponsorship model that CWS uses to help refugees – people fleeing persecution in their home countries for safety in the United States – and applying it to help meet the particular needs of Americans displaced by the Gulf hurricanes," says Erol Kekic, Associate Director of the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program.
Every year, CWS serves tens of thousands of refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers with case processing, resettlement, chaplaincy, legal, and other services – many of them through LFS.
National church bodies that support the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program stepped forward with special funding for the hurricane evacuees, and additional money has been raised as part of a public appeal for funds to support a broad CWS program of assistance to Gulf hurricane survivors. CWS/IRP participating denominations are: American Baptist Churches in the USA, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Reformed Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church.
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