In recognition of National Volunteer Week, beginning on April 17th, the IRC in Silver Spring shares the experience of our Community Engagement team’s Transform Mid-Atlantic AmeriCorps VISTA, Michalina Kulesza, who began her year of service with the IRC in July 2022.  

“Growing up, I’ve always had an interest in working with immigrant and refugee populations. I was raised as a first generation Polish American in a small town in upstate New York. While growing up I didn’t have the words to describe a lack of integration, I now reflect on and understand the importance of inclusion and community-building efforts for newly arrived immigrants. I am happy to serve at the IRC in Silver Spring where I'm able to support such efforts. 

I remember growing up and asking my mom how she identified culturally, having received her U.S. citizenship, and not living in Poland for 30 years. Her response surprised me, saying that she felt she was in between cultures; despite build her family and career in the U.S., when she visited Poland, she found that so much had changed in the country she associated as her home that it looked nothing like what she carried in her memories. 

In serving at the IRC in Silver Spring, one of my roles is to assist with the administering of the Family Mentor Program, a mentorship program where refugee families are matched with volunteers to support their community integration. This program is one of the final services that the IRC offers its clients to ensure that they can act self-sufficiently, for instance in navigating their community, making connections and friends and understanding the resources available to them. 

I also lead our office’s communications efforts, sharing the stories of the IRC’s clients. Elevating the stories of our clients allows us to humanize the experiences of refugees being resettled in Maryland and to show the community how a global circumstance, such as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 or the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, can affect them in their local community with migrants arriving in their own neighborhood. 

The decision to leave everything you know behind to flee persecution and war involves a steep leap of faith. In understanding the challenges that displaced individuals, immigrants, asylees, refugees and many other migrant families experience coming to a new country, I recognize the trauma, loneliness and fear that can follow them. I am proud to serve at the IRC through my roles of storytelling on behalf of our clients, and long-term integration to improve the experiences that families, like my parents, have in coming to this country.”