Bridge to Self Reliance 2000 refugees San Diego CA

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