news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Local residents interested in helping the growing refugee community here can attend a planning meeting today.

The Refugee Information Network of Guilford meets at 1:30 p.m. for its monthly session. Officials have invited the public to help work on a plan to better serve the refugee community, which took a hit earlier this year when Lutheran Family Services announced it would no longer handle refugees in Greensboro.

The network has received support from local foundations to hold a major planning session on improving services in Guilford County, said the Rev. Virginia Herring, assistant to the rector at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, where network meetings are held.

“We need to have a long session, several hours where we work together to figure out how do we go about it from here,” she said.

In the past year, refugees who resettled here came from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burma, Burundi, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and Vietnam, according to FaithAction, a nonprofit that works with refugees and immigrants.

The poor economy revealed gaps in services when refugees struggled to find jobs and maintain housing, said Sarah Ivory, refugee program director for the Greensboro office of Church World Service.

Advocates have been working on some issues for the past year. They met last week with city and county officials to talk about what’s happening.

“I feel that it was positive in that all those people were around the table and committed to (talking) about refugee issues,” Ivory said.

Lutheran Family Services should be able to wrap up its cases before closing, Ivory said.

The three remaining agencies that work with refugees in Guilford County expect to serve about 670 new refugees through September.

Agencies typically help refugees find housing and jobs, working with them for three to six months under a federal funding program, Ivory said.

However, Lutheran Family Services held the state contract for working with refugees. The state program provides funding so refugees can receive aid for up to five years.

Anyone in that program will be absorbed by whichever group gets the new state contract, Ivory said.

The agencies are working together to make the transition run smoothly when Lutheran Family Services stops providing services in June, she said.

The refugee agencies are understaffed and overworked, Herring said. One main way the community could help now would be to volunteer, she said.

“They are way overwhelmed in terms of manpower to help the people they have coming in,” she said.
 

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com