Every holiday season, the IRC in Phoenix conducts a Holiday Giving Campaign to welcome refugees and other immigrants to our community. Through the Holiday Giving Campaign, individuals, families, and organizations sponsor a newly-arrived refugee family, providing them with gifts of much needed items. 

An IRC volunteer in Phoenix reads from a book as a child looks on.
Help families feel welcome this Holiday season!
Photo: Andrew Oberstadt / IRC

The Holiday Giving Campaign helps support refugee and asylum seeking families who have resettled from countries such as Afghanistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria in during fiscal year 2021. These families have escaped war and persecution in their home countries and faced extremely difficult circumstances. Now, they are beginning to rebuild their lives in the United States.

Your contribution this holiday season not only provides these families with greatly needed items, but lets them know that their community cares and welcomes them.  Your gifts not only directly benefit your sponsored family, but also provide a community match of goods and time. Your contributions of time and gifts are matched $2 to $1 by the federal government, which provides rental assistance and job readiness training to newly arrived families.

For 2021, we are continuing to apply COVID-19 safety measures. This year's program will be conducted through a mix of in person and online.  With in person deliveries, sponsors will have to maintain social distancing and remain outside of families’ homes.  For remote participation, the IRC will share the Amazon wish list with each family's sponsor, which will include items their sponsored family has requested. Those items can be either brought to the IRC office by the sponsor. or mailed through Amazon.

Help make refugees welcome this holiday season. Contact Alexandra Coons ([email protected]) to become a Holiday family sponsor!