CBI Blogs

Last year, Cathy Campbell wrote a guest blog in this bulletin about the growth of Austin Jews and Partners for Refugees from a grassroot effort originating in the Jewish Community into a thriving non-profit with hundreds of volunteers of all faiths and dozens of faith-based community organizations that assisted almost a thousand Afghan refugees to begin their new lives in Austin.

The past year has been rather different for Austin Jews and Partners for Refugees. The rate of refugees coming to our community has slowed down, but we have faced a new set of challenges. Most personally significant for our organization was the loss of one of our founding members, Russ Apfel, in October. Russ had a huge heart for helping refugees. He led our fundraising efforts and spearheaded many of our initiatives, and he left a hole in our organization that has been hard to fill. It is an understatement to say that we miss him greatly!

Outside of AJPR, the year has also brought changes in the landscape of the organizations who support refugees in Austin. Refugee Services of Texas, once the only Resettlement Agency in Texas, closed unexpectedly last Spring, and new organizations have opened their doors, including HIAS, with whom AJPR has been working closely.

I know that I am far from alone in the Jewish community in Austin, in having personal family connections with HIAS, which, then known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, helped my grandmother’s family when she arrived in the US at the age of 5 from the area that is now Ukraine.

AJPR’s work with HIAS currently includes setting up apartments, helping with transportation to appointments, food pickups from food pantries, and cultural orientation. There is also significant need for volunteers to advocate for refugee families with government bureaucracies, to help identify landlords who are willing to work with HIAS, and to help refugees with their job searches.

Although fewer refugees are arriving in Austin than during the height of the Afghan crisis, the needs of those who are here are still quite significant. Recent arrivals struggle with learning English, finding work, and generally becoming self-sufficient. A particular barrier that has arisen recently due to bureaucratic issues is described here in this Go Fund Me campaign.

If you would like to join us in welcoming our refugee neighbors, we would love to work with you to find the right volunteer opportunity. And if you enjoy working alongside other like-minded volunteers, there is also a special synergy when a group gets together to provide support for a particular family. AJPR would love to work with a group of Beth Israel volunteers who are willing to join forces to help in this way. Contact me here to learn about individual or group opportunities.

Whether you prefer to volunteer as an individual or as part of a group, or whether you would like to provide cash or in-kind donations to help refugees, know that you are paying forward the help that so many of our relatives received when it was their turn to be strangers in a new land.

Sherry Blum, President of Austin Jews and Partners for Refugee