At the Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, Judy Doering is discussing her volunteer work on behalf of new arrivals to the country.
“It kind of is a calling for me,” Doering says.
She’s just spent her afternoon helping an Afghan family apply for WIC benefits. Doering’s group of church volunteers helps new arrivals with everything – finding housing, grocery shopping, English lessons, trips to the mosque. Some are tasks that at one point may have been done by staffers at Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS.
But the refugee resettlement agency has been besieged by federal funding cuts. It was recently forced to close its main New Haven office space, and its staff of 100 is down to less than 50. Its Welcome Corps program, a national model for resettlement, was forced to shutter.
Volunteers like Doering have always been part of IRIS’s model, but in the face of downsizing, they’re more critical than ever.
“I don’t call it a burden,” Doering says. “I think if you volunteer you want to help. It makes it a little more challenging, let’s just say that.”
“The fact that these volunteers have stepped up and said ‘I will help’ – it’s working,” she says. “We’re solving these things. We’re getting it done.”
Today, Doering is getting things done for the Zazi family – Javid Zazi, his wife, and two young children. At their home in a Hartford suburb, Zazi, who worked with the U.S. military in his native Afghanistan, recounts hiding from and fleeing the Taliban.
“The situation was very difficult,” Zazi says. “It was very dangerous.”
But since arriving in Connecticut earlier this year, Zazi says Doering’s volunteers have helped the family get settled.
“They do everything for us, like personal growth, skills, shopping, development, goals, education,” Zazi says. “Everything they are doing for us, like a family. They are very kind people.”
‘It’s more than a job’
IRIS is known for those wrap-around services – everything from language classes to legal aid.
They even run a food pantry in New Haven. Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem spoke there recently.
“As the executive director of IRIS, I’m proud to say that because federal funding is cut, it does not stop our care for the people that we serve,” Mitchell Salem said.
The pantry could have been yet another casualty of hard times. But thanks to a collaboration with another local organization, the doors will stay open. Mitchell Salem says it’s just another way IRIS is getting creative. She says some former staff members are continuing their work completely pro bono.
“Many of them are,” Mitchell Salem says in an interview. “IRIS is more than just your employer. I think all of us that work there – it’s more than a job. You know, you see the need in the world. You see what we all see on screens now: people who are suffering.”
The Trump White House claims the U.S. lacks the ability to take in large numbers of migrants and refugees. Mitchell Salem sees the administration’s funding cuts and restrictions on refugee admissions as devastating and wrong.
“I feel like every day keeping us going is a way to say ‘you don’t tell us how to live our values,’ that ‘you’ being the U.S. government,” she says. “We will serve our mission because our mission is integral to who we are as Americans, to our nation, to our very DNA as a nation of immigrants. And we’re not stopping that.”
Mitchell Salem says IRIS will forge ahead in large part due to community support. That’s good news for new arrivals like Zazi.
“I’m very happy,” Zazi says. “I’m so glad to be with the volunteer teams. I’m so optimistic for the future – for the bright, bright new future.”
It’s a bright new future IRIS hopes to be able to provide for all those it serves, even as it continues to navigate through precarious times.
