Friday, June 28, 2024

Each year, Catholic Community Services of Utah hosts an event in June as part of National Refugee Month. This year, the “Journeys to Refuge” event was held on National Refugee Day, June 20, in Liberty Park.

“It's important to hold this event each year to educate Utahns about the refugees coming to their community and how they can be involved in welcoming them,” said Alexis Arnold, refugee resettlement director. “We want Utahns to understand who refugees are, where they come from, their backgrounds and their culture so they can be enriched by their experiences and learn how to help and better welcome them.”

This year, Journeys to Refuge participants visited several booths to learn about the home countries of some of the refugees the organization has helped. They also learned about the agency's programs and how they can get involved in refugee relief efforts by volunteering or donating.

Several staff members are former refugees themselves. Both Julia Pylypenqo and Victoria Holko are case managers who work with refugees from their home country, Ukraine. Holko has lived in Utah for 20 years; Pylypenqo has been here since the war in Ukraine broke out.

“We provide a service for refugees from all over the world: help with driving licences, finding work, filling [out] “We decided to revise their resumes and invoices to advance their careers if possible,” Pylypenqo said. “We also hold traditional events such as film screenings and performances of popular Ukrainian culture.”

Yvette Messaka is a guest worker at CCS. After she was forced to leave her home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2007 due to a civil war, Messaka spent several years in Rwanda and Uganda before emigrating to the USA in 2011. At the time, her daughter Vanessa was still a toddler.

The USA welcomes everyone, “and then we have the opportunity to offer our children a job and a school and a good career,” says Yvette Messaka about her experiences in America.

The Messakas appreciated the opportunity to share about their country at the event.

“Congo is a beautiful country,” said Yvette Messaka. “We have great natural products like our food and before the war we had a good economy.”

This year, CCS will have helped 600 refugees resettle, said Aden Batar, director of CCS's Migration and Refugee Services and a former refugee himself. In 1994, he, his wife Asho and young son Jamal were the first Somali refugee family to arrive in Utah.

Over the past three and a half years, the federal government has increased the number of refugees it has allowed into the United States, Batar said.

Under the previous presidency, the number of refugees allowed to enter this country was reduced, but “this year would be the first year since Biden took office that we reach 125,000 refugees allowed to enter the United States,” Batar said. “So we have seen a lot of refugees, people who [had] Your cases are on hold, they are arriving now.”

CCS has exhausted its resources to help the refugees arriving in Utah, he said, and local Catholics can do even more to help. “We need the commitment of all of our Catholic communities and the support of our refugees. I know that [Bishop Oscar A. Solis] We recently sent a letter to all Catholic parishes. We want every parish to get involved and volunteer. We need more volunteers. We need foster families to take in our unaccompanied minors and we also need donations so that we can continue to care for this enormous number of refugees.”

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