Bridge to Self Reliance 2000 refugees San Diego CA

Our staff told us, "The families need to be visited more frequently."  

Our refugees asked, "Can we have more times when we can talk with staff or volunteers?"

Our records indicate that more of our refugees than in previous years, are unable to come to distribution points for food, so more families are seeking home delivery.

Our experience indicates that households run by a single mother or grandmother will need visiting and supporting over a longer period than families with two or more wage earners. 

Our experience has shown us that clashes between the culture in which a family was originally raised and the culture they find here in San Diego are better solved initially in consultations held in refugee homes, rather than in more public settings.

Our donors have always shown an interest in the way the Network builds trust and confidence.

" That IS what we do best, " we decided .   

Energised by the October retreat we had just concluded, the Board of Directors for the Episcopal Refugee Network of San Diego excitedly determined several steps on our path forward, given all the feedback we had received. The first bold one is to hire two more drivers to take over some of the driving done by our outreach workers.  This will give the outreach workers more time visiting families, helping them develop  their plans for self-sufficiency. 

As we begin to raise more money to allow for this growth, we are excited to welcome on to the Board, a new member who is eager to put to work for us his skills in advertising and video-making.

  For all these reasons we are ready to move forward with your help.  Your support of our project in many different ways, has led to graduations from High Schools and from Universities and to successful completion of cerificates that lead to better jobs.  Because we work only with UN certified refugees who are legal residents in San Diego County, you can be assured that every dollar is of great value.   It will help adults and children improve their English skills; it will help us find scolarships for those ready for more education; it will open up opportunities that will keep hope and joy alive in refugee lives. 

We also are encouraged by the end of year opportunities provided by GlobalGiving. They are providing matching funds and bonuses, to leverage even more funds from your donations on Giving Tuesday and from then until December 31.  Please help us with our goal of 50 individual donors on Giving Tuesday (November 27th).  And if you can make this donation the first of regular monthly donations, the amount of the first donation will be matched up to $200. 

Please mark your calendars now!  Giving Tuesday for our project on GlobalGiving's website starts at 1 minute past midnight on Tuesday November 26 EASTERN TIME and ends 1 minute before midnight on Wednesday November 27 EASTERN TIME. 

 Matching funds will apply until they run out, so it is advantageous to find out what the eqivalent time is where you are on Tuesday 26, and arrange to check out our project, "Bridge to Self-Reliance - 2,000 refugees in San Diego", on GlobalGiving's website, to make a donation there early in the time frame.    We are aiming at 50 individual donors this time, so please ask your adult family members. to also make a donation, in that same 24 hour time-frame, each using a credit card with his/her name on it. Please like us on Facebook or other social media platforms.  Spread the word about why you have supported us in the past and our excitement about the year ahead, when you meet friends who share your interests.  It would be fun to go viral!   Most of you have been through this process before.  If all of you bring along 4 more into the 24 hour action, that would make the goal easily reachable.   

Thank you for being supporters of this project, and for all you are able to do to help us once again.

Elaine McLevie

Watching the everyday exchanges between our staff and the increasingly multicultural families who bring us their hopes, dreams, concerns and fears, is an experience that always lightens my step, and gladens my heart.  These new members of our community sit together, plan together and become part of a trusting  group, to whom any one of them can turn for guidance and feedback. 

At first this process is difficult to imagine for a newcomer.  I remember one refugee lady who, with a puzzled look said to me, "Why are you helping us?  You are not one of our tribe."  A few months later she asked, "If you have money, why don't you just give it to us?"  And after a few more months neither question was even remembered.  Having been here just over a year, the same lady, now more at home in this country,  said, "Something is happening that makes me really worried.  Can I talk about  it with you?  I need to think about what will fix this."

I marvelled at how she had come from just trying to subsist from hour to hour, or day to day, in her war-torn country of origin, to having a sense of options and perhaps a future.  That is the process that our staff members gently encourage, by creating a safe environment for exploring. It underpins our tutoring groups that contain children of different faiths, learning together in a respectful, cooperative way. It enables the finding of common ground. What an amazing set of social skills both adults and children learn from these encounters, and what assets those adults and children become to the communities they will be part of well into the future,       

Those of you who generously give of your time or donate to our cause are also the wonderful glue that binds together this expanding group. You provide the leg work and underwrite the work hours and the items that make empty apartments into welcoming homes.  You make it possible to provide the necessary transport and translation for tutoring and every other interface with offices that refugees need to visit.  And you encourage others to join in this cause by supporting us when we need to find a magic number of individual donors for challenges, so valuable to us on Global Giving's web site. 

Please give us feedback on our reports to you, and share them with your facebook and other social media friends.  Tell them about how you came to know about this project, and why you support us. Ask them to join us in whatever way they can, so that they too can bask in the joy when we all see new members of our community succeed way beyond their own early expectations.

Elaine McLevie