RefAmerica

RefAmerica seeks to foster a warm American welcome for refugees who have been resettled in the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The goal of RefAmerica is to promote full inclusion of recently arrived refugees in America and to provide small groups of participant refugees with the tools both to tell their stories and to help forge for themselves, their families and their fellow refugees, like generations of Americans before them, a new American story.

RefAmerica brings recently resettled refugees from around the United States to Washington, D.C. to join with American counterparts for a program of leadership and public-speaking training, cross-cultural exchange, team-building, and learning about the United States and its American immigrant stories.  Participants have a chance to tell their own stories and their team's stories to small supportive American audiences and to plan to make a difference in helping welcome refugees in their American home communities.  Refugee participants stay with welcoming American host families in the Washington DC area.  Local teen participants provide crucial peer support to refugee participants by engaging with them in a wide array of cross-cultural exchange, team-building and community service activities; working together to build public speaking and leadership skills; advocating for refugees; and offering their refugee contemporaries friendship, welcome and an introduction to teen life in their new home country.  RefAmerica launched in 2017.  In July 2017, 2018, and 2019 six to seven Syrian refugee high school students recently resettled around the United States joined with local American counterparts from Montgomery County and surrounding areas to participate in the program.  Over the course of 2020-2023, RefAmerica participants and alums have helped to set up new homes locally in preparation for arriving refugees, mentored, and participated in a few  leadership and public-speaking workshops and activities.  With the arrival of increased numbers of Afghan refugees,  Special Immigrant Visa recipients, and refugees of other varied countries of origin, RefAmerica is diversifying its support for new arrivals and would welcome additional teen volunteers.  In July of 2024, RefAmerica intends again to bring six to ten recently resettled refugee teens to the nation's capital to be joined by local teen volunteers in our leadership program.  RefAmerica is a sister program of its fiscal sponsor, New Story Leadership, which delivers a comparable program based in leadership training, cross-cultural exchange, and the narrative method.