Direct Help for Asylum Seekers coming from Detention Centers
Are you feeling helpless and wish you knew who and how to help? While in Arizona, we met and interviewed many organizations that are on the ground, in the trenches, meeting the immediate and urgent needs of those coming directly from ICE detention centers. We will highlight each one this week!
We toured the warehouse for Gathering Humanity, an NPO founded by three amazing women, which has become a stabilizing force that has earned the respect and confidence of every organization involved in this humanitarian dilemma.
They are the gate-keepers that organize it all! They deliver supplies and goods to the many churches in the area who receive busloads of people every week. They are run 100% by volunteers and depend on the help and donations that come from volunteers.
With increasingly high demands for donations, please consider donating to Gathering Humanity:
1. If you are local to the Phoenix area and would like to volunteer time or resources (choosing from a wide variety of opportunities), go to their Facebook page for constant updates!
2. If you are farther away and would like to help with monetary donations, please go to their donation page here! Every cent goes directly to helping refugees and asylum seekers!
WE can absolutely vouch for their integrity and the vital role they are playing in supporting the humanitarian needs there.
Why consent matters to us (and why it should matter to you too).
It is especially important to provide accurate information as to how a photo will be used and obtain consent when working with refugees.
Stories are Changemakers: An Instagram Live with Sarah Kippen Wood
Sarah Kippen Wood, Former Executive Director of Their Story is Our Story (TSOS), shares how stories connect and lead to change in an interview with Darien Laird, our Director of External Media. Sarah gives us an inside look at how TSOS functions and shares how telling her story helped her fight a stage four cancer diagnosis.
Uniting for Ukraine: U.S. Sponsors Needed
Just as citizens in Europe and the U.K. have heroically supported displaced Ukrainians by opening up their homes or securing other housing, assisting with school enrollments, employment needs, and language learning, Americans now have the opportunity via the Welcome.us Sponsor Circles program to directly help newly arrived Ukrainians. The United States has committed to welcoming 100,000 Ukrainians temporarily for a period of two-years and the ability to apply for employment authorization in the U.S. as long as they have a U.S.-based sponsor to petition for them.