The past few weeks have been very busy for Asha’s Refuge.   It’s been exciting, but I am always kept very humble.  There are so many refugees in need.  Their needs are sometimes food, clothes, warm blankets and better housing  but not always.  Once those initial needs are met, they need jobs in order to keep the housing they have or to continue to bring food home for their family.  They need jobs to bring in the money necessary to provide school supplies to their children who are newly enrolled in school.  They need the money to work towards buying a car and putting gas in it to get it to a job.  (Our Memphis bus system is not efficient.)  In order to get a job, refugees must learn English and in order to get a better job, refugees need to get a basic education and then their GED. 

You see, until refugees are able to have their basic education, they are often unable to really be very successful resettling here in America.  Despite popular beliefs, most refugees DO NOT want to stay on government support.  They are embarrassed by it and want us to know that they WANT to work and are very WILLING.  Most refugees are very hard-working and dependable, but they need a gentle person to train them and give them some basic job skills. 

This is why Asha’s Refuge really needs financial support!  It’s not to hand refugees money and cause them to depend on us.  It’s to set up programs to that will provide these types of life skills and job training.  Some have said that it is easy for people to just write a check and never get involved and many have balked at that idea.  As for Asha’s Refuge, we desperately need your money!  We welcome those who have been blessed and have been given the means to help others financially.  While we certainly will need many helping hands and hearts that are willing to work and befriend refugees face to face, we cannot provide a place for this to occur in a way that will promote a drastic positive impact if we do not have the building space and things necessary to do so.  We need continual financial donations to move through the processes of obtaining our own workspace, learning space, training areas and places to come together. 

Financial support will be used to pay for the gas that it takes our staff to run around and serve the refugee community.  Each week our staff makes visits to our refugee friends, we often take them to their doctor appointments, to the grocery store, tutor them in English, help them understand their bills and mail, help them complete applications and just offer them help overall with a successful resettlement here in America.  There are so many refugees who are here that want our support.  The more volunteers and staff that we have the more help we are able to offer refugees families.  The more volunteers and staff we have, however, the more Asha’s Refuge must have itself together in a way that we can train volunteers, provide the supplies volunteers need and a place for them to come to help serve the refugee community. We have many ideas and dreams that we believe are God sized ideas to bring help to the refugee community.   We just cannot thank you enough for helping us financially!