In 2019, First Church’s Outreach Committee started the Greater Hartford Refugee Resettlement Coalition, GHRRC.  The mission of the group was to bring the local faith community together to help resettle refugee families in the Hartford area. We are now an interfaith ministry team at First Church.  

GHRRC consists of about 90 members which include people from First Church, Avon Congregational, The Emanuel Synagogue, The Muslim Center, as well as, several individuals from the greater Hartford area.  We both background check and train the volunteers. So far, we have co-sponsored four families and are getting ready to help more.   

When we co-sponsor a refugee family, we work with IRIS, Integrated Immigration and Refugee Services, to get them established in the US.  The goal is to make the family self-sufficient within approximately 3 months.  We find and furnish an apartment or house.  We welcome them on the first day and provide transportation from New Haven.  We introduce them to their neighborhoods, grocery stores, banks, transportation,…We help them find ESL, a job, childcare, and schools.  We also help them manage DSS, establish a bank account, and make a budget. The last thing we do is help them through the green card process. 

Resettlement costs approximately $20,000+ per family.  The money that we raise goes for expenses such as rent, language services, clothing, and furnishings. Some of the general expenses are reimbursed by federal money.  However, there are also unexpected situations that arise — COVID, personal injury (which causes lost time at work), and medical expenses. In addition to the money we spend, we also heavily rely on the local community for donations of the physical items needed, services, and language translation. 

Although the refugee program has been halted, there is a high demand to help refugees that just arrived.  Since the funding has been cut off, these families are in desperate need for help to begin their lives here in the US.  Sponsorship groups, such as IRIS, have been decimated by the funding freeze and are having to cut staff leaving less people to help refugees find jobs and establish their lives here.  Additionally the freeze in funding has caused sponsorship groups to not be able to cover rent for refugees who just initially arrived, so they are facing eviction.  

Our goal is to try to help these refugees establish a base line to live here in the United States so they do not fall through the cracks left by this abrupt freeze in funding to the refugee resettlement program.