Wonder what’s happening behind the scenes at the IRC? Sheila Hubert, COVID Navigator in Salt Lake City, describes the IRC’s ongoing local response to the pandemic in support of refugee families and their communities.

Welcoming Refugees Alliance, a partner-led group at Starbucks, collaborate with the IRC and other community organizations to help make Washington a welcoming place for newcomers. Learn more about their efforts over the past year!

The University of Utah Dental School provides free dental work to newly arrived refugees, showing how much a smile can affect our health.

Whether applying for school or jumping into career opportunities, high school seniors participating in the IRC in Salt Lake City’s college & career readiness programming are learning to play to their strengths.

Among the many challenges that 2020 brought to many around the world, the closing of international borders and travel restrictions as a result of the pandemic further limited the already dwindling number of refugees accepted by the Trump Administration. Prior to the pandemic, the Trump Administration had reduced the number of refugees the United States was committed to welcoming. At the onset of the pandemic, the arrivals of refugees to Tallahassee halted altogether, and it wasn’t until the end of 2020 that new families began to arrive across Big Bend communities. This time, the newly arrived families were coming from Latin America. This was a first for the IRC in Tallahassee’s short four-year history, which has historically welcomed families from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria.

Refugees and immigrants are some of the most impacted communities of COVID-19, and many newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers have been dealing with stress and isolation. In order to help provide healthy coping mechanisms, the IRC in LA created an arts and wellness program for youth in our unaccompanied children program.

Thanks to the help of donors, the IRC in Los Angeles was able to deliver gifts and much needed items to over 50 refugees and asylum seeking families this holiday season!

Volunteer groups can provide critical support for newly-arriving families as they rebuild their lives.

New Roots Charlottesville celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day with their first, outside, socially-distanced volunteer day of 2021 at New Roots Farm, featuring nine AmeriCorps service members.

The IRC in Richmond is celebrating the incredibly generous gift of a 15-passenger van from New Hanover Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsville.