Closet Clothes lends help to refugee community 

Minnesotans understand cold weather and the clothes needed to survive temperatures below zero. People from elsewhere—especially from other countries—may not know until they arrive.

The Afghan Cultural Society (ACS), located in Cedar Riverside, supplies refugees in Minneapolis with necessities, like coats and shoes, through a community-sourced free clothing closet.  

The closet’s purpose is to make life in the Twin Cities more livable for refugees, said ACS digital communications leader Gabe Van de Water. Although clothing is its main feature, the nonprofit gives away dishware, children's toys, bookbags and car seats. 

Following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover of the country, former president Joe Biden’s administration evacuated approximately 76,000 people from Afghanistan to the U.S. That year, the state of Minnesota approached ACS to assist the Twin Cities refugee resettlement effort. 

ACS social services coordinator Naser Mohammadi was among the evacuees. His professional connections to NATO and the U.S. military made him a target for the Taliban. He risked being killed if he stayed in Afghanistan and arrived in the U.S. in 2022. 

ACS began in 2018 as a volunteer-operated arts and culture organization, offering a space for Afghans to connect. While its core purpose remained, its client base and funding grew substantially after 2021.

After that, state and local grants supported ACS’s expansion to an office building so it could provide more consequential programs, like the clothing closet, Van De Water said. 

Today, ACS supports Afghans in and around the Twin Cities both economically and socially through cultural events, banking assistance, accessing medical care, navigating school systems and, according to Van de Water, even addressing issues with unresponsive landlords. 

The U.S evacuation effort from Afghanistan was rushed and complicated, Mohammadi said. Despite having full lives and careers at home, people who fled to the U.S. suddenly lacked essentials like food and clothing.  

“I brought a laptop, that's all I had,” Mohammadi said. Although it snows in Afghanistan, Minnesota's cold weather is more extreme. 

His education and experiences traveling outside Afghanistan made the move to the U.S. less abrupt, nonetheless, cultural and systematic differences made emigrating to a new country difficult. 

Needing a car to get to the grocery store, for example, is one way he said his life changed since being in Minneapolis. Without a car, though, a walk or trip on public transportation requires winter clothes—and that’s a challenge the clothing closet can help a refugee overcome. 

Because many refugees had nothing when they arrived here, the closet helped a lot of people, said ACS associate director Fouzi Slisli. Now that refugees are more familiar with the Twin Cities, there is less of a need for ACS closets’ support. 

No matter, the organization continues to serve the broader population, Van de Water said. Extra donations are brought to the George Floyd Square clothing closet, and the ACS closet is open to people in its surrounding neighborhood, more than half of whom live below the poverty line. 

“Anyone can come in and check it out and take what they need,” Van de Water said. 

Alongside mutual aid efforts, the organization works to challenge uninformed Western narratives of the Afghan people, said Slisli. In addition, he said the variety of Afghan cultures and languages represented at ACS is celebrated, despite the Taliban’s desire to suffocate the diversity. 

Slisli encourages people to be thankful instead of judgmental. He said refugees make the community richer in culture and perspective. 

“Individuals and families are small components, and the powers that determine what happens in this world are massive,” Slisli said.