Photo by Joanna Gardner
On a Tuesday afternoon just before the bell rings, a group of high school students carries bag after bag, neatly labeled, to the waiting Catholic Charities staff person’s car. They are members of Collingswood High School’s Interact Club, a group dedicated to community service. Over the past month the group has collected coats, hats, gloves, scarves, blankets, and other warm winter items for refugee families.
The group’s moderator, Mary Ann Guinoiseau, is a special education teacher at the high school and runs a peer tutoring class for ESL students, many of whom are refugees. Her experiences with these students inspired her to look for other ways to help. She reached out to Catholic Charities, the agency that resettled the refugee students in her class and their families.
“They told me the refugees really would benefit from having blankets and coats and such, things to keep warm in the winter. So I brought that back to the Interact Club and they embraced the idea immediately,” Guinoiseau said.
At first, the group’s 50 members collected the donations themselves, finding unused items in their houses or going out and buying them. Then they opened the drive to the school.
“It’s been humbling,” said junior Emmah Evangelista, the group’s co-vice president. “It made me feel really lucky about what I have and where I am in my life, and I feel like I sometimes don’t appreciate that as much as I should.”
The group plans on continuing to collect donations for the refugee program throughout the school year.
“It just shows that people can be helpful to others who are in these situations,” said senior and co-president David Gongora. “It’s like a sign of hope.”
“Without taking any credit for it,” chimes in junior Derek Huynh, referring to the students who donated items. “They didn’t need to be known, they just needed to give.”
The significance of material donations
Material donations are particularly critical to Catholic Charities’ Refugee and Immigrations Services program.
“When refugees arrive here, most of them have very few possessions,” said Priscilla Adams, Catholic Charities’ Refugee Academic Success Coordinator. “There are many things that they need in the U.S. that they might not have even needed before, like winter coats or school supplies that schools here require.”
Refugees are given a limited amount of funding from the federal government to help them pay expenses during their first three months in the U.S. After that, they must be self-sufficient. If these funds are used for household items, furnishings, clothing, even food, they will not be enough to cover necessities like rent for those first three months while the family members look for employment, according to Catholic Charities’ staff.
The program relies on donations to furnish refugee apartments and for all supplemental materials, like school supplies or Christmas toys, which would otherwise come out of the family’s limited budget. From the first day a family arrives, the program’s main priority is helping them achieve self-sufficiency through employment. Staff begin reaching out to employers and arranging interviews sometimes even before a family arrives.
“The donations we receive are pivotal to the success of the refugee program. This is a public and private partnership where the inclusion of community participation in the resettlement of refugees is a pillar to its operation,” said Patrick Barry, director of Refugee and Immigration Services at Catholic Charities.
“All new refugees are on track to become new Americans, and the sooner they become acclimated with daily life in America, the easier it is to transition toward self-sufficiency and becoming productive members of American society.”
The program will accept donations of almost anything, so long as it is in good condition.
Motivated by faith
Parishes are frequent supporters of the program. Saint Katherine Drexel Parish in Egg Harbor Township and Holy Angels Parish in Woodbury have been collecting household goods for the refugee program since early January as part of their Jubilee of Mercy celebration.
Infant Jesus Parish in Woodbury Heights has had a long-standing partnership with the refugee program. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter the parish’s St. Vincent DePaul society sets aside some of their food baskets and toys for the refugee families served by Catholic Charities. This Christmas the group donated nearly 100 toys and at each holiday they give food baskets to 10 refugee families.
“We’re called to serve those who are in need, regardless of where they’re located or where they’re from,” said Vanessa Messina, president of Infant Jesus’ St. Vincent DePaul conference.
“When I hear some of the stories of these refugee families I can’t even imagine what they are going through, coming to a new country with nothing but the clothes on their backs. We do this to let them know there are people in your community, in your area who do care, who are praying for you; to let them know that they’re welcome and we’re so happy they’re here.”
Tim Gerland, financial secretary for the parish’s Knights of Columbus council, echoed a similar theme. This winter the council donated 24 new winter coats for refugee children.
“Our country was basically founded by refugees, and to be able to help them and really give them an idea that they’re not isolated, they’re not out there by themselves, that there are people who care about them and want them to succeed in life, I think that’s really great,” he said. “This is who we are. It’s about evangelizing through charity, trying to spread the word, but through demonstration.”
For Adams, it’s a privilege to see both sides of the equation.
“I have the most fortunate role in this because I get to interact with the donors, who really care and want to help other people, and let them know how much their donation means. And I interact with the recipients, who are so thankful to get these things. So I see the joy on both sides,” she said.
“Really all of the donations are like miracles. They are unplanned; we never know when we’re going to get a donation.”
To learn more about donating to Catholic Charities’ Refugee Resettlement program, visit CatholicCharitiesCamden.org/Refugee-Immigration, or contact Patrick Barry: 856-342-4167, Patrick.Barry@camdendiocese.org. Upcoming education, service, and social events featuring the refugee program are listed at CatholicCharitiesCamden.org/Mercy.
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The mercy of embracing refugees
Pope Saint John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem In Terris, published in 1963, was a dynamic force in shaping Catholic social teaching in the modern world. In discussing matters of war, peace and political activity, it continually returns to the theme of human dignity as the source of all inherent rights and responsibilities. Below are passages of the encyclical dealing with the treatment of migrants and refugees.
Every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own State. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that he is a citizen of a particular State does not deprive him of membership in the human family, nor of citizenship in that universal society, the common, world-wide fellowship of men. …
It is not irrelevant to draw the attention of the world to the fact that these refugees are persons and all their rights as persons must be recognized. Refugees cannot lose these rights simply because they are deprived of citizenship of their own States.
And among man’s personal rights we must include his right to enter a country in which he hopes to be able to provide more fittingly for himself and his dependents. It is therefore the duty of State officials to accept such immigrants and—so far as the good of their own community, rightly understood, permits—to further the aims of those who may wish to become members of a new society.
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