Help for refugees resettling in Arizona

This man lived in a Nepalese refugee hut for 17 years. He was born in Bhutan and left the country in the 1990s, along with thousands of other refugees who were stripped of their citizenship as ethnic Nepalese by Bhutan’s government and then faced intimidation. Now the U.S. government is resettling thousands of these refugees. The man and his family are delighted to be here. Their housing is provided by IRC, an international resettling organization, which gives a bed for each person, a couch, a table and a bit of a flatware. Beyond that the house is bare and that’s where this woman, the Director of the Welcome to America Project comes in. She and a team of volunteers meet newly resettled refugees and provide them with items they need to make their new house cozy. These volunteers take stock of the apartment and see how they can help. The Welcome To America Project will help its 500th family this summer, after having started five years ago. She says she wants to give refugees a foundation on which to build their new lives in the U.S. for Phoenix’s resettlement agencies, they appreciate the work of organizations like Welcome to America as well because it allows them to focus on other needs of the newly resettled refugees. A week later, this white pickup truck drops off boxes of furniture and small household items and gives them to Bhutanese family. The IRC says they’ll resettle 600 refugees in Phoenix this year.