After I stopped working, I looked for a volunteer opportunity during the week that would leave me free to be with Tish on the weekend. Once again I turned to Volunteer Match to find something and found International Rescue Committee (IRC).
The sole purpose of the IRC is to help the plight of refugees. It is conservatively estimated that there are more than eight million refugees currently seeking asylum somewhere.
At the IRC some of the opportunities for volunteers are:
- Tutoring refugees in basic English skills
- Helping refugees write resumes and prepare for job interviews
- Contacting potential employers on behalf of refugees
- Mentoring refugee families or individuals
It is truly a wonderful and efficiently run organization. Fully 90¢ out of every dollar donated to the IRC goes to the refugees.
I return twice weekly to assist in the ESL-2 class. In that class we teach English in the context of lessons in different aspects of American culture. We were giving “American culture lessons” as well as English lessons. During the teaching of aspects of our culture I explain how we do things and often ask how it was done in their country.
I have heard many interesting stories and my heart goes out to these people. I don’t ask a lot of questions. They will tell me what they want me to know about what they have been through. One man told me he was a refugee from Ethiopia but before he arrived here he had spent 17 years in a refugee camp in Kenya. I asked him about his living conditions there. He said that when he first arrived at the camp he was in a tent. Eventually he built himself a small brick house, but he had to make the bricks himself out of water and mud. There is a poster in the offices of The IRC that has a picture of a refugee and underneath, the saying, “It takes courage to be a refugee”. Nothing could be truer.
