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Small church learns it has much to offer refugees
Pictured, back row: Kathy Kelley, Gray Fitzgerald, Ethel McConaghy, and Peer Kraft-Lund. Front row: Manirambona, Brandee Kraft-Lund, Harerimana, Speline Irakoze, and Helen Fitzgerald.
Photo: Racquel Devost
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By Helen Fitzgerald
The Congregational Church of North Barnstead, New Hampshire, was looking for a local outreach opportunity in which children, teens, and adults could be involved. Members hoped to form lasting relationships with people of diverse backgrounds.
Our congregation is small and we have only recently grown into a year-round church. Although our people are generous, our annual budget is tiny and generally our families are stretched financially. I did not expect that we would have much to offer. I was wrong.
Shelley Lathrop, volunteer coordinator for the Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Program (IRRP) in Concord, trained and matched us with Jacqueline Manirambona, her husband Martin Harerimana, and their daughter Speline Irakoze, a refugee family from Burundi.
We quickly learned that each and every member of our church can make valuable contributions to the refugees who are resettling in our communities. The most urgent needs are met through relationships.
Helping refugees adjust to U.S. culture is an amazing experience. There are so many skills to learn. Newly arrived refugees move from one challenge to another. IRRP offers a foundation of support for newly arrived refugees, but volunteers help with everything from learning about grocery shopping and scheduling doctors’ appointments to dealing with landlords, employers, teachers, and food stamps.
It helps if both volunteers and refugees have a sense of humor. One night shortly after I met Jacqueline, Martin, and Speline, I telephoned them to confirm when I would be visiting. Then my husband took the phone and chatted with them. We must have been talking for 10 minutes when I realized they had no idea who we were!
This kind of volunteer work is best attempted in partnership. The hurdles facing refugee families are sometimes overwhelming. A volunteer needs good limit-setting skills, self-awareness and the safety net that comes from working within a community of care, a volunteer team.
All of us are stirred by news reports of genocide, war, famine, and the uprooting of multitudes of people, but we are quickly reabsorbed in our daily lives. To know a family is to know and be affected personally by the enormous impact of injustice in our world today. My husband has called this a process in which "the distant becomes personal." It takes some courage to be willing to face that.
Volunteers will be changed by their work. One begins to discern a call to action; a call to become an activist for the vast numbers of uprooted, marginalized and displaced people in our world.
For anyone considering volunteering with refugees, I would recommend it without hesitation. Be prepared to enter into a relationship in which there will be both formidable challenges and inspiring encounters. In my experience, for every small contribution that I have made, I have been very generously rewarded.
Jacqueline, Martin, Speline, and now baby Shadrack, born in June, are a treasure in my life. They are dear to my heart. They teach me by helping me see my culture through a fresh perspective. They are generous about sharing their culture, and I have much to learn from them about friendship, faith, optimism, and gratitude.
Helen Fitzgerald is a member of the Wider Ministries Committee at the Congregational Church of North Barnstead, New Hampshire, a congregation of the United Church of Christ.
She originally wrote about her volunteer experience for the New American News, published by the Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Program, a Church World Service affiliate and part of Lutheran Social Services of the Northeast.
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