Immigrant and Refugee Reform

Perhaps our most active of the initiatives, these efforts are chaired by Janie Fishman and Diane Heller. They have a volunteer core of 115 members and the committee primarily collaborates with other organizations. The following are some of the projects our committee has been in involved in over the past several years:

• Emergency Response: The group organizes participants on an as-needed basis, such as helping to resettle a 9 member family from Ukraine in partnership with the Federation, providing gift bags and clothing to Afghan refugees in partnership with New American Pathways and holding a drive for winter clothing & needed items for the victims of the earthquake in Turkey.
• Food Distribution: A grant through the Religious Action Center (RAC) enabled us to partner with the City of Atlanta & Temple Emanu-El to provide & distribute food during Covid to many Latino families within the city of Atlanta.
• The group engages with the Afghan Alliance to provide assistance to the Afghan community in Atlanta.
• The group has arranged meetings with GA representatives to raise issues impacting the immigrant/refugee community.
• The Committee is currently working closely with Friends of Refugees, a non-profit that supports refugees in the Clarkston community. We have several volunteers who are tutoring Afghan women in an English class. These women are illiterate in their own language and have never before attended school. We will also continue to sponsor a week of summer camp (through Friends of Refugees) for approximately 200 refugee children in Clarkston during the month of July. We provide financial & volunteer support for the camp program during that week.

To learn more about – and get involved with – our efforts in this area, contact Carrie Bohn.