Southern hospitality welcomes refugees from around the world: Triangle nonprofits foster community

Story by Anna Louise Neil

Elementary school students file off the bus at Cedar Point Apartments every weekday afternoon. In seconds, the silence of the parking lot is broken by children playing soccer and shouting in a collage of languages; Swahili, Pashto, Arabic. As they talk, the students make their way to several three-bedroom units, converted to classrooms.

The walls are covered with posters, reading: “This is a safe space to be who you are” and “We can do hard things”. These posters are colorful, matching the rest of the classroom decor. As students claim spots at the desks and bean bag chairs, volunteers sit down beside them to help with homework.

These converted apartment units in Raleigh are utilized daily by Refugee Hope Partners, a nonprofit organization serving refugees in the city. Staff and volunteers facilitate Homework Help after school for approximately 300 students.

North Carolina was ranked sixth of the top 10 placement states for refugee resettlement in 2021. That year, RHP welcomed 200 refugees to the RDU region. As refugees are continuously placed in the Triangle, local nonprofits like RHP offer support.

Road to refugee resettlement

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the term refugee was defined in the 1951 Refugee Convention as, “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Omer Omer, director of the NC Field Office for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, was a refugee from Sudan. Originally a journalist, he fled the country due to a political situation. After living in the U.K., he moved to the U.S. in 1996, where he now helps refugees navigate the resettlement journey.

After refugees leave their home country, they move to a second country, where they often live in a refugee camp for years before getting a chance to relocate to a third country. In most cases, their third location is in the U.S., Canada, Australia or Europe.

USCRI is one of four resettlement agencies with field offices in North Carolina, alongside Lutheran Services Carolinas, Church World Service Durham and World Relief Durham. These private organizations prepare for refugee relocation to the state even before they arrive, working to secure housing and enrolling children in school.

“We do everything to make it possible for them to survive here in the United States and with self-sufficiency,” Omer said.

Adam Clark, executive director of World Relief Durham, said the relationship between the U.S. Department of State and resettlement agencies is a public-private partnership, where the government accomplishes the resettlement of refugees through these agencies.

“The State Department has what’s called a cooperative agreement with nine or 10 agencies in the United States,” Clark said. “Each of those agencies has a network of offices across the country. The federal government provides funding to support them. Those agencies also raise private dollars in other avenues to try to further support refugees.”

Clark said the initial resettlement process is a 30 to 90-day program, with the end goal of refugee self-sufficiency. However, helping refugees through this transition takes more than 30 to 90 days of walking alongside them, he said.

And agencies in the Triangle are there as a support system, offering case management, housing, employment and health services. World Relief Durham, for example, offers mental health services to clients, with three full-time mental health clinicians on staff.

What makes the Triangle special?

On one of the walls of a RHP Homework Help classroom, there is a poster covered in flags. When students enter the classroom, they often point to the flag representing their home country.

As of 2021, RHP was serving 275 families from 40 countries. Cedar Point houses many of them. While RHP officially opened in 2018, the executive director and several others moved into Cedar Point to start serving refugees in 2007. A community was created.

Gradually, the refugee population of the apartment complex grew to rent 90% of the units.

“I think resettlement agencies just saw the opportunity here for families to be able to have a lower cost of living,” said Paul Smith, Cedar Point community coordinator for RHP.

“I think now more so the agencies are placing families here because they know Refugee Hope Partners is there. And they know if they place a family there, they’re gonna have more resources than if they weren’t placed there.”

Smith said the nonprofit has a great relationship with the management company for Cedar Point, Schrader Properties, which also owns Dover Apartments, another location where a significant number of RHP clients live.

“I think he’s a huge advocate,” Smith said. “He’s one of the very few property owners in Raleigh who is prioritizing giving housing for refugees.”

From ESL classes to social work services to Bible studies, RHP works to be comprehensive in its offerings so they can love the whole person, according to VP of Family Engagement Sarah Beth Sickling.

“We really do want to be an organization that will help people help themselves,” Sickling said. “We want to teach a man to fish instead of giving him the fish.”

Ariette Buliro, an intern for RHP, is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When her family moved to the U.S. a decade ago, they were placed at Cedar Point and she participated in RHP’s programs.

Many refugee students experience bullying at school as they navigate new social norms, according to Buliro. But at RHP Homework Help, she said students have a place for not only reading and math, but a safe space to come back to after school.

“They’re coming to this place where it’s like, ‘Okay, I can read, I can laugh, I can joke, I can just talk about anything; be myself,’” Buliro said. “Because that’s how I was too. When I first moved here, I was quiet at school; I did not speak very much. As soon as I left that bus and I went to Homework Help, when I tell you I would talk. I would just talk and talk and talk.”

Clark said the Triangle is a welcoming and progressive community for refugees. He said that Durham Refugee Day was started through a partnership between World Relief Durham, CWS Durham and city administration.

“A large public festival, basically every summer, close to the date of World Refugee Day, that kind of publicly acknowledges and celebrates refugees in the community,” Clark said. “Not all communities have that kind of thing.”

Omer said North Carolina has generally been a receptive state for refugees both officially and in communities. For a community to be considered welcoming for refugees, it has to be accessible in terms of employment opportunities.

“The refugee program is all about self-sufficiency,” Omer explained. “Protection yes, but once they bring them in the country, they want them to be able to depend on themselves.”

Finding affordable housing

Even with the myriad of resources available in the Triangle, refugees still face housing challenges. Affordable housing is the largest limiting factor to the number of refugees who can come to the community, Clark said.

Mark Evans, senior communications specialist for CWS Durham and Greensboro, said it is difficult for their organization to find safe housing and in good condition, ready for when refugees arrive in the area.

Because resettlement agencies receive one to three weeks notice before a refugee family arrives, their living situation is not always ready. For CWS Durham, they rely on partnerships, including with Airbnb, to find temporary housing.

For more permanent housing, CWS Durham starts by contacting apartment complexes they have worked with in the past, Evans said. They also use volunteer groups, called community sponsorship groups, who work to find an apartment and furnish it alongside a staff person.

However, Smith still worries about the future of affordable housing for the refugee community. He said that, even across the street from Cedar Point, luxury apartments are under construction.

“This place isn’t promised for the refugee community,” Smith said.

But as housing changes around them, students carry on with games of tag in the Cedar Point parking lot and receive stickers for a job well done at RHP’s Homework Help.