This World Refugee Day, we are reaching back in history and taking inspiration from seven extraordinary individuals, among many over the years, who have stood with refugees. They have shown that progress is possible, even when the odds can feel too great to overcome.

For National Volunteer Week, we are highlighting some of our volunteers who have helped the IRC in Dallas this year. Read about them here.

The only Afghan grocery store in Georgia, Baseer’s Kabul Market has been an invaluable resource for the community as we welcome families who were recently evacuated from Afghanistan by the US. Since mid-October, the IRC in Atlanta has purchased more than 100 hot welcome meals from Kabul Market along with countless loaves of traditional Afghan bread!

As the new school year begins, we at the IRC in Atlanta are looking forward to welcoming a new class of brilliant Youth Futures students. But before kicking off a new year of learning, our Youth Futures team said goodbye to 33 accomplished students who all successfully graduated in May!

Several young students enrolled in the IRC in Atlanta’s Dental Assistant program—a successful collaboration between our Career Development and Adult Education teams and partners at Gwinnett Dental Career Academy—were spotlighted by local TV news channel, 11Alive in March!

With Santa Clara County seeing a continued upward trend in daily positivity rates for COVID-19, IRC San Jose has remained in full-remote work since mid-March. As we delved deeper into the summer of 2020, this reality made us question the future of Vision 2.0: Summer Job Academy (hereinafter referred to as Vision). Vision is an immigrant-female empowerment workshop aimed at allowing participants to learn about different career paths, to reflect on their personal goals, and to work towards envisioning themselves achieving their goals. Read further to see how we navigated the barriers posed by COVID-19 to still offer this workshop this summer!