About 50 refugees from Afghanistan to settle in the Joplin area
Meeting at Joplin Public Library . . . .
A group of about 50 refugees from Afghanistan – about ten families – will settle in the Joplin area.
A meeting on the resettlement is slated for 11:30 a.m. this Tuesday in the Community Room of the Joplin Public Library. Kara Gebre of Refugee and Immigrant Services and Education (RAISE) will conduct the hour-long session.
RAISE plans to train teams from local churches to serve as a support group for the Afghan refugee population.
“Our focus in this field will be on providing direction, as well as compassion for those immigrants who come into our community as refugees,” the group’s website states. “We put a large emphasis on the importance of those who come to our country from any type of persecution, and we intend to serve them.”
According to the website, RAISE was founded out of a deep awareness of mounting social, cultural, and economic issues facing refugees in Noel, Missouri. Unlike some other areas of the country, there no local resettlement office to provide the much needed assistance to the growing community whose needs are highly differentiated compared to those of immigrants arriving in America’s major cities.
Smaller towns lacks the infrastructure, housing, transportation, health care and other critical social services found in bigger cities.
Relocation to this area (for many) represents their second or third migration for some refugees, especially those in Noel who come from areas other than Afghanistan, since leaving their home country (either fleeing persecution, or the pursuit of opportunity, economic independence and stability).
The majority of most new-arrival refugees and immigrants are limited English speakers. This reduces their ability to acculturate and access services that are already available in their community.
More than 123,000 civilians were evacuated by US forces and its coalition partners after the Taliban took control of the capital on August 14th, according to the BBC.
The US government has said that it flew nearly 80,000 civilians out of Kabul and of those, about 5,500 were Americans and more than 73,500 were either Afghans or other foreign nationals.