At the end of this month, some Bay Area residents will get a new neighbor — a family of Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war ravaging their homeland.
As they settle into their new home, they will get initial help from established agencies such as Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay, which has experience resettling immigrants and refugees from many cultures.
“We will help get them off to a good start,” said Avi Rose, JFCS/East Bay executive director. “We have 350 volunteers who work with refugees, people motivated by faith or by a desire to be good citizens.”
Most recent arrivals have been from Afghanistan, primarily those who worked with the U.S. military as translators. “We have not seen big numbers of Syrians yet, but we will,” Rose said.
The family expected at the end of this month is only the beginning. In response to the largest refugee crisis since World War II — more than 60 million people are displaced worldwide — the U.S. will accept 10,000 refugees from Syria in the coming year. JFCS/East Bay has agreed to welcome 160 refugees to the Bay Area next year, and some of them likely will be from Syria. “The screening and vetting process for them is long, up to two years,” Rose said.
Getting ready to help welcome these people is a newly organized interfaith coalition. Made up of nine congregations representing four faith communities — Catholic, Protestant, Mormon and Jewish — it includes Old First Presbyterian Church, Grace Cathedral, Congregation Emanu-El, Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Mission Bay Community Church, Noe Valley Ministry, the Oakland First Ward of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, St. John’s Presbyterian Church and Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Anti-immigrant political rhetoric was one of the coalition’s motivating forces, organizers say.
“When Donald Trump and others were proposing to build walls and ban Muslims from entering the country, I talked with the pastor and a member of Mission Bay Community Church about doing more to help refugees,” said Bill Campbell, a lawyer and chair of the mission committee at Old First Presbyterian Church.
In January, Campbell met with Rita Semel, co-founder of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, who told him that Congregation Emanu-El was working on the same issue. As of last December, Emanu-El had collected 6,000 pounds of clothing for Syrian refugees, and some congregants had gone to Lesbos, the Greek island where many of the refugees were seeking shelter (jweekly.com/article/full/76410/a-jews-calling-emanu-el-congregant-helps-refugees-in-greece).
“Since then, synagogues across the Bay Area and around the nation have called to talk about what we’re doing here,” said Emanu-El Rabbi Ryan Bauer. Campbell also spoke with Bauer, and then reached out to other local congregations. The coalition’s first meeting was in March. Asked for the group’s name, Campbell said, “We don’t have one. We haven’t gotten to that.”
One thing the group has done is help publicize a new national pro-refugee campaign. In mid-May more than 50 humanitarian, religious and nonprofit groups, including several Jewish organizations, launched Refugees Are Welcome, a project founded in response to “the increase in hateful, anti-refugee political rhetoric.” (See refugeesarewelcome.org).
“Together, we are saying that Donald Trump doesn’t speak for us,” Campbell said. “We want to show government leaders that we are ready to welcome refugees as neighbors.”
Campbell emphasized that the new local coalition is “building from the bottom, not the top.” Each congregation is polling its members to determine interest in and commitment to appropriate volunteer projects that would help the agencies and nonprofit organizations that already resettle refugees in the Bay Area.
“It can be a challenge to gather a community around a crisis taking place in an international space,” Bauer said. “We’re here, sitting in our homes and synagogues, and we have to localize the issue.”
“When we meet, what we learn from one another will inform our next steps,” Campbell said. Those steps likely will include assembling welcome kits and food rescue kits, tutoring and mentoring adults and children, educating refugees about shopping or public transportation or providing a bedroom for a new immigrant for a few weeks.
The group’s next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 7.
This is not the first local faith-based initiative to step forward. In Danville, a longstanding interfaith community has now turned its focus to helping with refugee resettlement. Founded in the mid-’90s, Interfaith of the San Ramon Valley has worked to combat homelessness, held peace vigils, raised money for food banks, held interfaith festivals and organized annual services honoring LGBTQ individuals and those congregations that openly affirm them.
This year, finding affordable housing for refugees is the group’s top priority.
“Before the High Holy Days last year, we contacted JCFS/East Bay and Catholic Charities to educate ourselves about the refugee crisis, and we decided to focus on housing, which is the biggest challenge,” said Rabbi Dan Goldblatt. He is the spiritual leader of Danville’s Beth Chaim Congregation, one of the 15 faith communities that make up the San Ramon Valley coalition.
In addition to Beth Chaim, coalition members are Baha’i of Danville, Danville Congregational Church, Danville Stake Church of Jesus Christ LDS, First Church of Christ Scientist, Muslim Community Center of the East Bay, Path to Anandam, Peace Lutheran Church, the Reutlinger assisted living facility, San Damiano Retreat, San Ramon Valley Islamic Center, San Ramon Valley United Methodist Church, St. Isidore’s Catholic Church, St. Joan of Arc Parish and St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church.
So far, the group has been able to provide housing for five refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia thanks to rooms donated by the San Damiano Retreat, an 80-bed facility in Danville operated by Franciscan monks.
“It is a windfall, and it created a sense that we need to do more,” Goldblatt said. “The whole community is involved now in a housing inventory to see what we have, and our group is exploring buying some mobile homes at a trailer park.”
Those five former refugees often speak at events sponsored by coalition members. “Maybe some audience members don’t understand at first why we are doing this,” Goldblatt said. “But when you put a face on the refugee crisis, everything shifts. Then people get it.”
JFCS/East Bay has launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise $50,000 in matching funds for refugee resettlement (bit.ly/welcomefund).