Helping Home: A Mother Stands up for Refugees
Donation protected
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” – Fred Rogers
Dear Friends:
This letter has been sent to literally everyone I’ve ever known. I have never done anything like this, but then again, I’ve never felt anything to be so urgently important. The thoughts expressed here have been percolating for years and the writing process took weeks. I feel like I am handing you my heart. So, thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. It’s not the shortest thing I’ve ever written, so you might want to make yourself comfortable and settle in.
Most of you are aware that we are witnessing a global humanitarian crisis the likes of which we’ve never before seen: the highest levels of human displacement on record. An unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are children. I am writing to you because we can help them.
For many years now, I have been quietly consumed by this crisis. I have read, listened to, and watched everything I can. I have donated, fundraised, marched, protested, petitioned, written letters, made calls, planned events, mentored and volunteered. I have researched sponsorship, fostering, and even applying to law school. I have confined most of my concerns and efforts to a private, interior realm…until now.
Last year, when the horrors of the U.S. administration’s Zero Tolerance border policy came to light, I shattered into a million pieces. It was all I could do to collect enough of myself to get dressed in the morning, drive my kids to school, and go through the motions of everyday life. Entire days were lost in a fog of grief. I was overwhelmed by compassion fatigue and information fatigue, as so many of us were.
But humanitarian crises aren’t solved by agonizing, they are solved by organizing. They are solved by translating empathy into action. A new me has emerged post-Zero Tolerance; one reconstructed with intention and fortified to be stronger than before. Now I am ready to organize.
What I Am Doing Part 1: Fundraising
I am creating an organization called Helping Home and I could use your help. Its mission will be to help refugees by raising money, raising awareness, and lining up the helpers in an immediate and ongoing effort. The name Helping Home references the concept of helping refugees home; whether “home” is a temporary shelter, a new life in a receiving country, or a safe return to a country of origin in recovery.
All funds raised on this platform will go to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), known to be the gold standard of aid groups working with refugees. It is rated A+ by Charity Watch and 4 Star by Charity Navigator and it has an incredibly impressive Board of Directors and Overseers . I have volunteered with the IRC in various capacities in three cities over the course of nearly a decade.
My fundraising goal is $10,000. The first portion will be applied to IRC Oakland's H.O.M.E. program (Housing Outreach Mentorship & Education), a private sponsorship model that pairs newly arriving refugee families with community members. As a H.O.M.E. participant, my responsibility will be to:
1) Welcome a family by furnishing their new home
2) Provide a rental subsidy for the first 5 months
3) Serve as a mentor and advocate for the first 6 months
Please let me know if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to join my H.O.M.E. team.
Newly resettled refugees face unique challenges, including, but not limited to: finding affordable housing, finding employment, language and communication barriers, racism and discrimination, impact of disrupted education, separation from family members who remain in the home country and/or other countries of asylum, and ongoing health issues due to trauma. For these reasons, programs like H.O.M.E.—which offer financial, emotional, and logistical assistance—are crucial to the safety and success of newly arriving refugees.
San Francisco’s Bay Area is such an expensive and challenging place to live that most of the refugees who are resettled here through IRC are selected because they have strong English language skills that bolster their chance for survival. These refugees typically have Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), which require the recommendation from a General or Flag Officer from the U.S. Armed Forces or from the Chief of Mission from the U.S. Embassy in the refugee’s home country. Refugees with this classification are those who put their lives at risk by serving as interpreters alongside American troops, diplomats, and intelligence services. They are our friends and they deserve unwavering welcome.
Any monies raised through my fundraiser in excess of the H.O.M.E. program’s financial requirements will be donated to the IRC’s headquarters to assist in their global efforts.
What I Am Doing Part 2: Raising Awareness
In addition to raising money, Helping Home will strive to raise awareness. To that end, I have secured a website: HelpingHome.org (content to come soon) and a Facebook page: @HelpingRefugeesHome. The Facebook page will contain links to intelligent, vetted information helpful in understanding the issues of our global humanitarian crisis. It will also contain links to action items: petitions, legislation, events, and more.
Please email me through this site if you’d like to get involved. You do not need to have any special skills to help. Each of you has unique perspectives and talents and we need you all. We need everyone.
What I Am Doing Part 3: The Future of Helping Home
I do not know where all this will lead, only that it is a first step. Right now Helping Home is an advocacy group comprised of citizens. Perhaps it will become a nonprofit or a research institute or something else entirely. Whatever it becomes, I hope that it will be a vehicle toward affecting better policy and making the world safer and more humane for millions of people. A lofty goal, I know, but there is a quote I love attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Why Refugees?
With so many worthy causes out there, so many ways to make a difference, why focus on refugees? Because they are, quite simply, some of the world’s most desperate, vulnerable people. Because they are in imminent, life-threatening danger and they are terrified. Because helping refugees demonstrates the mercy and compassion that all great religious traditions espouse. Because doing so honors our country’s founding principles. And most importantly, because no human being should be denied a place on this earth.
In persuading people to help with this crisis, I think it is crucial to first really reflect upon what it means to be a refugee. The definition of a refugee is a person who is forced to flee his or her country due to war, violence, or persecution. No one wants to be forced from home—to leave behind family, friends, schools, and everything they’ve ever known—especially in a state of emergency. Imagine the conditions leading to a situation like this: imprisonment, torture, loss of property, loss of livelihood, starvation, physical assault, rape, terror.
For most refugee families, the journey to safety is a journey through hell. It is arduous, costly, and dangerous. It involves a long, grueling trek, over hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles, through treacherous terrain with nonstop exposure to the elements. Scorching heat, freezing temperatures, lack of access to clean water, and poor sleeping conditions cause illness, dehydration, and exhaustion. Now imagine caring for infants and children through this. I can barely get through a Target parking lot without one or both of my children needing to be carried. How can these families walk for days, weeks, months carrying children? What about the families whose children have special needs, who are disabled or ill?
But the physical part of the journey is not the worst of it. Refugees and migrants are vulnerable to such a myriad of horrors it is hard to even scratch the surface. To begin with, many of them pay high fees to smugglers in the hopes of expediting the journey, with no guarantee. They are often extorted by officials and locals, who capitalize on their fear of being detained or deported. They are beaten and robbed. They are kidnapped for ransom. Sometimes they are killed. Women are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault and human trafficking. According to Amnesty International, 60% of migrant women and girls are raped on their journey, while other data indicates the number is actually closer to 80%.
In refugee camps the situation remains dire. These hastily built shelters are intended as temporary accommodation, but the average amount of time a refugee spends in a camp before being resettled is 20 years. Just let that sink in for a moment: 20 years. It is a place where children are born, where they might grow into adults, where they might die. It is a place largely forgotten by the rest of the world. It is a place where girls cannot walk alone. It is a purgatory, where inhabitants are stuck between two places, belonging to neither, searching, waiting, for a way out, while the rest of the world moves on.
These are human beings who have experienced trauma unlike anything we can even imagine and they need our support and protection.
Why Am I Doing This?
In early September, 2015, I was driving my children to a swimming pool when I heard the news of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi’s body washing up on a Turkish shore. As the voice on the radio described the toddler’s red shirt, the way his body lay on the sand as if only asleep, time seemed to stand still. I pulled to the side of the road and and just sat there, gripping the steering wheel, sun streaming in, crying and crying and crying. My car was loaded with giant bags of bubble wands and fairy wings in preparation for my older daughter’s fourth birthday party. My kids were safely buckled in to their car seats, chatting away, eating goldfish crackers. That afternoon, they would splash around in the shallow end of a pool, wearing floaties and playing with water toys, while entire families would drown in the open sea.
The disconnect I felt that afternoon and the question that accompanied it has lingered with me ever since: Why do I get to live a life of peace and freedom and opportunity and prosperity while others do not? I ponder it nearly every day, and every time I do, I come to the same conclusion: that so much of what our lives become is due to the soil unto which we were born. Nothing more, nothing less. By dumb luck, I was born into conditions of stability and control. Others were born into conditions of chaos. I do not feel shame about it, nor do I feel pride. Just profound awe and gratitude. And then it seems to me so clear, so simple: there are those who need help (in the chaos) and those who can help (from the control). Right now, I am meant to help.
I believe that every single one of us, if we saw someone dangling from a cliff, would rush to help. We wouldn’t stop to analyze the person’s skin color or nationality, or check the balance in their bank account, or confirm their religious affiliation. Well, that’s what this humanitarian crisis is to me: millions of people dangling from cliffs. We can turn our backs and walk away, pretending we don’t see or pledging to get to it later. Or we can run to them as fast as we can and pull them to safety with all the power and strength of our beings. We can’t save them all, but if we all pull together, we can save many.
My friend, an athlete, said something to me a couple of years ago that I also think about nearly every day: “This isn’t the warm up, Kace, this is the game.” For all we know, we get this one life. I want mine to be extraordinary. I want it to be worthy of its privilege. I want us all to pour as much goodness into this world as we can, so that it swells with peace and beauty, so that it is better for the next generation. I want my daughters to be courageous and kind. I want to teach them that life is about showing up—for relationships, for democracy, for the things that matter. And the way to do that is to model it to them.
Gratitude
I’d like to wrap this up with a story that reflects the gratitude and spirit of every refugee I’ve known in my years of volunteering.
This one is about an Iraqi family of four in Dallas. The father had been a translator for the U.S. military. My family had purchased home goods for them and when we arrived to do the “apartment makeover” the mother threw open the front door to greet us, bounding with energy and emanating warmth. I adored her immediately. Her English was limited, so she just kept saying “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” as we carried everything in. She bustled around, trying to put together anything she could to offer us. As her children opened boxes, she poured orange juice into glasses and served them to us on a tray. I remember vividly the ceremony of it, the way she managed to make something simple feel special, the vibrant color of the juice and the way it seemed like a small miracle in that modest apartment. My daughters’ eyes were round with awe as they took in her hospitality. The visit wrapped up and we headed down stairs to our car. When we were about halfway down, the mother suddenly rushed outside and called to us to wait. She ran to us and this is what she did: she pressed candies into our hands. It was as if she couldn’t bear for us to go without giving us every last thing she had.
The refugees I have known are strong, resilient, proud. They do not want handouts; they want opportunity. They want to live in dignity and they want to pay it forward. They become the givers; they become the helpers.
Thank you for reading this letter. Please donate whatever you can afford, forward this letter, follow and “like” Helping Home on Facebook, and then email me to become a part of what comes next.
With love and gratitude,
Kacey Barron Meredith
Website (coming soon): HelpingHome.org
Facebook: @HelpingRefugeesHome
Dear Friends:
This letter has been sent to literally everyone I’ve ever known. I have never done anything like this, but then again, I’ve never felt anything to be so urgently important. The thoughts expressed here have been percolating for years and the writing process took weeks. I feel like I am handing you my heart. So, thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. It’s not the shortest thing I’ve ever written, so you might want to make yourself comfortable and settle in.
Most of you are aware that we are witnessing a global humanitarian crisis the likes of which we’ve never before seen: the highest levels of human displacement on record. An unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are children. I am writing to you because we can help them.
For many years now, I have been quietly consumed by this crisis. I have read, listened to, and watched everything I can. I have donated, fundraised, marched, protested, petitioned, written letters, made calls, planned events, mentored and volunteered. I have researched sponsorship, fostering, and even applying to law school. I have confined most of my concerns and efforts to a private, interior realm…until now.
Last year, when the horrors of the U.S. administration’s Zero Tolerance border policy came to light, I shattered into a million pieces. It was all I could do to collect enough of myself to get dressed in the morning, drive my kids to school, and go through the motions of everyday life. Entire days were lost in a fog of grief. I was overwhelmed by compassion fatigue and information fatigue, as so many of us were.
But humanitarian crises aren’t solved by agonizing, they are solved by organizing. They are solved by translating empathy into action. A new me has emerged post-Zero Tolerance; one reconstructed with intention and fortified to be stronger than before. Now I am ready to organize.
What I Am Doing Part 1: Fundraising
I am creating an organization called Helping Home and I could use your help. Its mission will be to help refugees by raising money, raising awareness, and lining up the helpers in an immediate and ongoing effort. The name Helping Home references the concept of helping refugees home; whether “home” is a temporary shelter, a new life in a receiving country, or a safe return to a country of origin in recovery.
All funds raised on this platform will go to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), known to be the gold standard of aid groups working with refugees. It is rated A+ by Charity Watch and 4 Star by Charity Navigator and it has an incredibly impressive Board of Directors and Overseers . I have volunteered with the IRC in various capacities in three cities over the course of nearly a decade.
My fundraising goal is $10,000. The first portion will be applied to IRC Oakland's H.O.M.E. program (Housing Outreach Mentorship & Education), a private sponsorship model that pairs newly arriving refugee families with community members. As a H.O.M.E. participant, my responsibility will be to:
1) Welcome a family by furnishing their new home
2) Provide a rental subsidy for the first 5 months
3) Serve as a mentor and advocate for the first 6 months
Please let me know if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to join my H.O.M.E. team.
Newly resettled refugees face unique challenges, including, but not limited to: finding affordable housing, finding employment, language and communication barriers, racism and discrimination, impact of disrupted education, separation from family members who remain in the home country and/or other countries of asylum, and ongoing health issues due to trauma. For these reasons, programs like H.O.M.E.—which offer financial, emotional, and logistical assistance—are crucial to the safety and success of newly arriving refugees.
San Francisco’s Bay Area is such an expensive and challenging place to live that most of the refugees who are resettled here through IRC are selected because they have strong English language skills that bolster their chance for survival. These refugees typically have Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), which require the recommendation from a General or Flag Officer from the U.S. Armed Forces or from the Chief of Mission from the U.S. Embassy in the refugee’s home country. Refugees with this classification are those who put their lives at risk by serving as interpreters alongside American troops, diplomats, and intelligence services. They are our friends and they deserve unwavering welcome.
Any monies raised through my fundraiser in excess of the H.O.M.E. program’s financial requirements will be donated to the IRC’s headquarters to assist in their global efforts.
What I Am Doing Part 2: Raising Awareness
In addition to raising money, Helping Home will strive to raise awareness. To that end, I have secured a website: HelpingHome.org (content to come soon) and a Facebook page: @HelpingRefugeesHome. The Facebook page will contain links to intelligent, vetted information helpful in understanding the issues of our global humanitarian crisis. It will also contain links to action items: petitions, legislation, events, and more.
Please email me through this site if you’d like to get involved. You do not need to have any special skills to help. Each of you has unique perspectives and talents and we need you all. We need everyone.
What I Am Doing Part 3: The Future of Helping Home
I do not know where all this will lead, only that it is a first step. Right now Helping Home is an advocacy group comprised of citizens. Perhaps it will become a nonprofit or a research institute or something else entirely. Whatever it becomes, I hope that it will be a vehicle toward affecting better policy and making the world safer and more humane for millions of people. A lofty goal, I know, but there is a quote I love attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Why Refugees?
With so many worthy causes out there, so many ways to make a difference, why focus on refugees? Because they are, quite simply, some of the world’s most desperate, vulnerable people. Because they are in imminent, life-threatening danger and they are terrified. Because helping refugees demonstrates the mercy and compassion that all great religious traditions espouse. Because doing so honors our country’s founding principles. And most importantly, because no human being should be denied a place on this earth.
In persuading people to help with this crisis, I think it is crucial to first really reflect upon what it means to be a refugee. The definition of a refugee is a person who is forced to flee his or her country due to war, violence, or persecution. No one wants to be forced from home—to leave behind family, friends, schools, and everything they’ve ever known—especially in a state of emergency. Imagine the conditions leading to a situation like this: imprisonment, torture, loss of property, loss of livelihood, starvation, physical assault, rape, terror.
For most refugee families, the journey to safety is a journey through hell. It is arduous, costly, and dangerous. It involves a long, grueling trek, over hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles, through treacherous terrain with nonstop exposure to the elements. Scorching heat, freezing temperatures, lack of access to clean water, and poor sleeping conditions cause illness, dehydration, and exhaustion. Now imagine caring for infants and children through this. I can barely get through a Target parking lot without one or both of my children needing to be carried. How can these families walk for days, weeks, months carrying children? What about the families whose children have special needs, who are disabled or ill?
But the physical part of the journey is not the worst of it. Refugees and migrants are vulnerable to such a myriad of horrors it is hard to even scratch the surface. To begin with, many of them pay high fees to smugglers in the hopes of expediting the journey, with no guarantee. They are often extorted by officials and locals, who capitalize on their fear of being detained or deported. They are beaten and robbed. They are kidnapped for ransom. Sometimes they are killed. Women are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault and human trafficking. According to Amnesty International, 60% of migrant women and girls are raped on their journey, while other data indicates the number is actually closer to 80%.
In refugee camps the situation remains dire. These hastily built shelters are intended as temporary accommodation, but the average amount of time a refugee spends in a camp before being resettled is 20 years. Just let that sink in for a moment: 20 years. It is a place where children are born, where they might grow into adults, where they might die. It is a place largely forgotten by the rest of the world. It is a place where girls cannot walk alone. It is a purgatory, where inhabitants are stuck between two places, belonging to neither, searching, waiting, for a way out, while the rest of the world moves on.
These are human beings who have experienced trauma unlike anything we can even imagine and they need our support and protection.
Why Am I Doing This?
In early September, 2015, I was driving my children to a swimming pool when I heard the news of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi’s body washing up on a Turkish shore. As the voice on the radio described the toddler’s red shirt, the way his body lay on the sand as if only asleep, time seemed to stand still. I pulled to the side of the road and and just sat there, gripping the steering wheel, sun streaming in, crying and crying and crying. My car was loaded with giant bags of bubble wands and fairy wings in preparation for my older daughter’s fourth birthday party. My kids were safely buckled in to their car seats, chatting away, eating goldfish crackers. That afternoon, they would splash around in the shallow end of a pool, wearing floaties and playing with water toys, while entire families would drown in the open sea.
The disconnect I felt that afternoon and the question that accompanied it has lingered with me ever since: Why do I get to live a life of peace and freedom and opportunity and prosperity while others do not? I ponder it nearly every day, and every time I do, I come to the same conclusion: that so much of what our lives become is due to the soil unto which we were born. Nothing more, nothing less. By dumb luck, I was born into conditions of stability and control. Others were born into conditions of chaos. I do not feel shame about it, nor do I feel pride. Just profound awe and gratitude. And then it seems to me so clear, so simple: there are those who need help (in the chaos) and those who can help (from the control). Right now, I am meant to help.
I believe that every single one of us, if we saw someone dangling from a cliff, would rush to help. We wouldn’t stop to analyze the person’s skin color or nationality, or check the balance in their bank account, or confirm their religious affiliation. Well, that’s what this humanitarian crisis is to me: millions of people dangling from cliffs. We can turn our backs and walk away, pretending we don’t see or pledging to get to it later. Or we can run to them as fast as we can and pull them to safety with all the power and strength of our beings. We can’t save them all, but if we all pull together, we can save many.
My friend, an athlete, said something to me a couple of years ago that I also think about nearly every day: “This isn’t the warm up, Kace, this is the game.” For all we know, we get this one life. I want mine to be extraordinary. I want it to be worthy of its privilege. I want us all to pour as much goodness into this world as we can, so that it swells with peace and beauty, so that it is better for the next generation. I want my daughters to be courageous and kind. I want to teach them that life is about showing up—for relationships, for democracy, for the things that matter. And the way to do that is to model it to them.
Gratitude
I’d like to wrap this up with a story that reflects the gratitude and spirit of every refugee I’ve known in my years of volunteering.
This one is about an Iraqi family of four in Dallas. The father had been a translator for the U.S. military. My family had purchased home goods for them and when we arrived to do the “apartment makeover” the mother threw open the front door to greet us, bounding with energy and emanating warmth. I adored her immediately. Her English was limited, so she just kept saying “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” as we carried everything in. She bustled around, trying to put together anything she could to offer us. As her children opened boxes, she poured orange juice into glasses and served them to us on a tray. I remember vividly the ceremony of it, the way she managed to make something simple feel special, the vibrant color of the juice and the way it seemed like a small miracle in that modest apartment. My daughters’ eyes were round with awe as they took in her hospitality. The visit wrapped up and we headed down stairs to our car. When we were about halfway down, the mother suddenly rushed outside and called to us to wait. She ran to us and this is what she did: she pressed candies into our hands. It was as if she couldn’t bear for us to go without giving us every last thing she had.
The refugees I have known are strong, resilient, proud. They do not want handouts; they want opportunity. They want to live in dignity and they want to pay it forward. They become the givers; they become the helpers.
Thank you for reading this letter. Please donate whatever you can afford, forward this letter, follow and “like” Helping Home on Facebook, and then email me to become a part of what comes next.
With love and gratitude,
Kacey Barron Meredith
Website (coming soon): HelpingHome.org
Facebook: @HelpingRefugeesHome
Organizer
Kacey Meredith
Organizer
Lafayette, CA